Chapter 6

It was very deftly done, and even Adams, the clear-eyed, could not help admiring the Rajah's skilful finesse. Of formal dinner-givings there might easily have been an end, since the construction camp had nothing to offer in return. But the formalities were studiously ignored, and the two young men were put upon a footing of intimacy and encouraged to come and go as they pleased.

Winton took his welcome broadly, as what lover would not? and within a week was spending most of his evenings in the Rosemary--this at a time when every waking moment of the day and night was deeply mortgaged to the chance of success. For now that the Rajah had withdrawn his opposition, Nature and the perversity of inanimate things had taken a hand, and for a fortnight the work of track-laying paused fairly within sight of the station at Argentine.

First it was a carload of steel accidentally derailed and dumped into Quartz Creek at precisely the worst possible point in the lower canyon, a jagged, rock-ribbed, cliff-bound gorge where each separate piece of metal had to be hoisted out singly by a derrick erected for the purpose--a process which effectually blocked the track for three entire days. Next it was another landslide (unhelped by dynamite, this) just above the station, a crawling cataract of loose, sliding shale which, painstakingly dug out and dammed with plank bulkhead during the day, would pour down and bury bulkhead, buttresses, and the very right of way in the night.

In his right mind--the mind of an ambitious young captain of industry who sees defeat with dishonor staring him in the face--Winton would have fought all the more desperately for these hindrances. But, unfortunately, he was no longer an industry captain with an eye single to success. He was become that anomaly despised of the working world--a man in love.

“It's no use shutting our eyes to the fact, Jack,” said Adams one evening, when his chief was making ready for his regular descent upon the Rosemary. “We shall have to put night shifts at work on that shale-slide if we hope ever to get past it with the rails.”

“Hang the shale!” was the impatient rejoinder. “I'm no galley slave.”

Adams' slow smile came and went in cynical ripplings.

“It is pretty difficult to say precisely what you are just now. But I can prophesy what you are going to be if you don't wake up and come alive.”

Having no reply to this, Adams went back to the matter of night shifts.

“If you will authorize it, I'll put a night gang on and boss it myself. What do you say?”

“I say you are no end of a good fellow, Morty. And that's the plain fact. I'll do as much for you some time.”

“I'll be smashed if you will--you'll never get the chance. When I let a pretty girl make a fool of me--”

But the door of the dinkey slammed behind the outgoing one, and the prophet of evil was left to organize his night assault on the shale-slide, and to command it as best he could.

So, as we say, the days, days of stubborn toil with the enthusiasm taken out, slipped away unfruitful. Of the entire Utah force Adams alone held himself up to the mark, and being only second in command, he was unable to keep the bad example of the chief from working like a leaven of inertness among the men. Branagan voiced the situation in rich brogue one evening when Adams had exhausted his limited vocabulary of abuse on the force for its apathy. “'Tis no use, ava, Misther Adams. If you was the boss himself 'twould be you as would put the comether on thim too quick. But it's 'like masther, like mon.' The b'ys all know that Misther Winton don't care a damn; and they'll not be hurtin' thimselves wid the wurrk.”

And the Rajah? Between his times of smoking high-priced cigars with Winton in the lounging-room of the Rosemary, he was swearing Jubilates in the privacy of his working-den state-room, having tri-daily weather reports wired to him by way of Carbonate and Argentine station, and busying himself in the intervals with sending and receiving sundry mysterious telegrams in cipher.

Thus Mr. Somerville Darrah, all going well for him until one fateful morning when he made the mistake of congratulating his ally. Then--but we picture the scene: Mr. Darrah late to his breakfast, being just in from an early-morning reconnaissance of the enemy's advancings; Virginia sitting opposite to pour his coffee. All the others vanished to some limbo of their own.

The Rajah rubbed his hands delightedly.

“We are coming on famously, famously, my deah Virginia. Two weeks gone, heavy snows predicted for the mountain region, and nothing, practically nothing at all, accomplished on the otheh side of the canyon. When you marry, my deah, you shall have a block of C. G. R. preferred stock to keep you in pin-money.”

“I?” she queried. “But, Uncle Somerville, I don't understand--”

The Rajah laughed.

“That was a very pretty blush, my deah. Bless your innocent soul, if I were young Misteh Winton, I'm not sure but I should consideh the game well lost.”

She was gazing at him wide-eyed now, and the blush had left a pallor behind it.

“You mean that I--that I--”

“I mean that you are a helpeh worth having, Miss Carteret. Anotheh time Misteh Winton won't pay cou't to a cha'ming young girl and try to build a railroad at one and the same moment, I fancy. Hah!”

The startled eyes veiled themselves swiftly, and Virginia's voice sank to its softest cadence.

“Have I been an accomplice,” she began, “in this--this despicable thing, Uncle Somerville?”

Mr. Darrah began a little to see his mistake.

“Ah--an accomplice? Oh, no, my deah Virginia, not quite that. The word smacks too much of the po-lice cou'ts. Let us say that Misteh Winton has found your company mo' attractive than that of his laborehs, and commend his good taste in the matteh.”

So much he said by way of damping down the fire he had so rashly lighted. Then Jastrow came in with one of the interminable cipher telegrams and Virginia was left alone.

For a time she sat at the deserted breakfast-table, dry-eyed, hot-hearted, thinking such thoughts as would come crowding thickly upon the heels of such a revelation. Winton would fail: a man with honor, good repute, his entire career at stake, as he himself had admitted, would go down to miserable oblivion and defeat, lacking some friendly hand to smite him alive to a sense of his danger. And, in her uncle's estimation, at least, she, Virginia Carteret, would figure as the Delilah triumphant.

She rose, tingling to her finger-tips with the shame of it, went to her state-room, and found her writing materials. In such a crisis her methods could be as direct as a man's. Winton was coming again that evening. He must be stopped and sent about his business.

So she wrote him a note, telling him he must not come--a note man-like in its conciseness, and yet most womanly in its failure to give even the remotest hint of the new and binding reason why he must not come. And just before luncheon an obliging Cousin Billy was prevailed upon to undertake its delivery.

When he had found Winton at the shale-slide, and had given him Miss Carteret's mandate, the Reverend Billy did not return directly to the Rosemary. On the contrary, he extended his tramp westward, stumbling on aimlessly up the canyon over the unsurfaced embankment of the new line.

Truth to tell, Virginia's messenger was not unwilling to spend a little time alone with the immensities. To put it baldly, he was beginning to be desperately cloyed with the sweets of a day-long Miss Bessie, ennuyé on the one hand and despondent on the other.

Why could not the Cousin Bessies see, without being told in so many words, that the heart of a man may have been given in times long past to another woman?--to a Cousin Virginia, let us say. And why must the Cousin Virginias, passing by the lifelong devotion of a kinsman lover, throw themselves--if one must put it thus brutally--fairly at the head of an acquaintance of a day?

So questioning the immensities, the Reverend Billy came out after some little time in a small upland valley where the two lines, old and new, ran parallel at the same level, with low embankments less than a hundred yards apart.

Midway of the valley the hundred-yard interspace was bridged by a hastily-constructed spur track starting from a switch on the Colorado and Grand River main line, and crossing the Utah right of way at a broad angle. On this spur, at its point of intersection with the new line, stood a heavy locomotive, steam up, and manned in every inch of its standing-room by armed guards.

The situation explained itself, even to a Reverend Billy. The Rajah had not been idle during the interval of dinner-givings and social divagations. He had acquired the right of way across the Utah's line for his blockading spur; had taken advantage of Winton's inalertness to construct the track; and was now prepared to hold the crossing with a live engine and such a show of force as might be needful.

Calvert turned back from the entrance of the valley, and was minded, in a spirit of fairness, to pass the word concerning the new obstruction on to the man who was most vitally concerned. But alas! even a Reverend Billy may not always arise superior to his hamperings as a man and a lover. Here was defeat possible--nay, say rather defeat probable--for a rival, with the probability increasing with each hour of delay. Calvert fought it out by length and by breadth a dozen times before he came in sight of the track force toiling at the shale-slide. Should he tell Winton, and so, indirectly, help to frustrate Mr. Darrah's well-laid plan? Or should he hold his peace and thus, indirectly again, help to defeat the Utah company?

He put it that way in decent self-respect. Also he assured himself that the personal equation as between two lovers of one and the same woman was entirely eliminated. But who can tell which motive it was that prompted him to turn aside before he came to the army of toilers at the slide: to turn and cross the stream and make as wide a detour as the nature of the ground would permit, passing well beyond call from the other side of the canyon?

The detour took him past the slide in silent safety, but it did not take him immediately back to the Rosemary. Instead of keeping on down the canyon on the C. G. R. side, he turned up the gulch at the back of Argentine and spent the better half of the afternoon tramping beneath the solemn spruces on the mountain. What the hours of solitude brought him in the way of decision let him declare as he sets his face finally toward the station and the private car.

“I can't do it: I can't turn traitor to the kinsman whose bread I eat. And that is what it would come to in plain English. Beyond that I have no right to go: it is not for me to pass upon the justice of this petty war between rival corporations.”

Ah, William Calvert! is there no word then of that other and far subtler temptation? When you have reached your goal, if reach it you may, will there be no remorseful looking back to this mile-stone where a word from you might have taken the fly from your pot of precious ointment?

The short winter day was darkening to its close when he returned to the Rosemary. By dint of judicious manoeuvering, with a too-fond Bessie for an unconscious confederate, he managed to keep Virginia from questioning him; this up to a certain moment of climaxes in the evening.

But Virginia read momentous things in his face and eyes, and when the time was fully ripe she cornered him. It was the old story over again, of a woman's determination to know pitted against a truthful man's blundering efforts to conceal; and before he knew what he was about Calvert had betrayed the Rajah's secret--which was also the secret of the cipher telegrams.

Miss Carteret said little--said nothing, indeed, that an anxious kinsman lover could lay hold of. But when the secret was hers she donned coat and headgear and went out on the square-railed platform, whither the Reverend Billy dared not follow her.

But another member of the Rosemary group had more courage---or fewer scruples. When Miss Carteret let herself out of the rear door, Jastrow disappeared in the opposite direction, passing through the forward vestibule and dropping cat-like from the step to inch his way silently over the treacherous snow-crust to a convenient spying place at the other end of the car.

Unfortunately for the spying purpose, the shades were drawn behind the two great windows and the glass door, but the starlight sufficed to show the watcher a shadowy Miss Virginia standing motionless on the side which gave her an outlook down the canyon, leaning out, it might be, to anticipate the upcoming of some one from the construction camp below.

The secretary, shivering in the knife-like wind slipping down from the bald peaks, had not long to wait. By the time his eyes were fitted to the darkness he heard a man coming up the track, the snow crunching frostily under his steady stride. Jastrow ducked under the platform and gained a viewpoint on the other side of the car. The crunching footfalls had ceased, and a man was swinging himself up to the forward step of the Rosemary. At the instant a voice just above the spy's head called softly, “Mr. Winton!” and the new-comer dropped back into the snow and came tramping to the rear.

It was an awkward moment for Jastrow; but he made shift to dodge again, and so to be out of the way when the engineer drew himself up and climbed the hand-rail to stand beside his summoner.

The secretary saw him take her hand and heard her exclamation, half indignant, wholly reproachful:

“You had my note: I told you not to come!”

“So you did, and yet you were expecting me,” he asserted. He was still holding her hand, and she could not--or did not--withdraw it.

“Was I, indeed!” There was a touch of the old-time raillery in the words, but it was gone when she added: “Oh, why will you keep on coming and coming when you know so well what it means to you and your work?”

“I think you know the answer to that better than anyone,” he rejoined, his voice matching hers for earnestness. “It is because I love you; because I could not stay away if I should try. Forgive me, dear; I did not mean to speak so soon. But you said in your note that you would be leaving Argentine immediately--that I should not see you again: so I had to come. Won't you give me a word, Virginia?--a waiting word, if it must be that?”

Jastrow held his breath, hope dying within him and sullen ferocity crouching for the spring if her answer should urge it on. But when she spoke the secretary's anger cooled and he breathed again.

“No: a thousand times, no!” she burst out passionately; and Winton staggered as if the suddenly-freed hand had dealt him a blow.

X. SPIKED SWITCHES

For a little time after Virginia's passionate rejection of him Winton stood abashed and confounded. Weighed in the balance of the after-thought, his sudden and unpremeditated declaration could plead little excuse in encouragement. And yet she had been exceedingly kind to him.

“I have no right to expect a better answer,” he said finally, when he could trust himself to speak. “But I am like other men: I should like to know why.”

“You can ask that?” she retorted. “You say you have no right: what have you done to expect a better answer?”

He shrugged. “Nothing, I suppose. But you knew that before.”

“I only know what you have shown me during the past three weeks, and it has proved that you are what Mr. Adams said you were--though he was only jesting.”

“And that is?”

“A _faineant_, a dilettante; a man with all the God-given ability to do as he will and to succeed, and yet who will not take the trouble to persevere.”

Winton smiled, a grim little smile.

“You are not quite like any other woman I have ever known--not like any other in the world, I believe. Your sisters, most of them, would take it as the sincerest homage that a man should neglect his work for his love. Do you care so much for success, then?”

“For the thing itself--nothing, less than nothing. But--but one may care a little for the man who wins or loses.”

He tried to take her hand again, tried and failed.

“Virginia!--is that my word of hope?”

“No. Will you never see the commonplace effrontery of it, Mr. Winton? Day after day you have come here, idling away the precious hours that meant everything to you, and now you come once again to offer me a share in what you have lost. Is that your idea of chivalry, of true manhood?”

Again the grim smile came and went.

“An unprejudiced onlooker might say that you have made me very welcome.”

“Mr. Winton! Is that generous?”

“No; perhaps it is hardly just. Because I counted the cost and have paid the price open-eyed. You may remember that I told you that first evening I should come as often as I dared. I knew then, what I have known all along: that it was a part of your uncle's plan to delay my work.”

“His and mine, you mean; only you are too kind--or not quite brave enough--to say so.”

“Yours? Never! If I could believe you capable of such a thing--”

“You may believe it,” she broke in. “It was I who suggested it.”

He drew a deep breath, and she heard his teeth come together with a click. It was enough to try the faith of the loyalest lover: it tried his sorely. Yet he scarcely needed her low-voiced, “Don't you despise me as I deserve, now?” to make him love her all the more.

“Indeed, I don't. Resentment and love can hardly find room in the same heart at the same time, and I have said that I love you,” he rejoined quickly.

She went silent at that, and when she spoke again the listening Jastrow tuned his ear afresh to lose no word.

“As I have confessed, I suggested it: it was just after I had seen your men and the sheriff's ready to fly at one another's throats. I was miserably afraid, and I asked Uncle Somerville if he could not make terms with you in some other way. I didn't mean--”

He made haste to help her.

“Please don't try to defend your motive to me; it is wholly unnecessary. It is more than enough for me to know that you were anxious about my safety.”

But she would not let him have the crumb of comfort undisputed.

“There were other lives involved besides yours. I didn't say I was specially afraid for you, did I?”

“No, but you meant it. And I thought afterward that I should have given you a hint in some way, though the way didn't offer at the time. There was no danger of bloodshed. I knew--we all knew--that Deckert wouldn't go to extremities with the small force he had.”

“Then it was only a--a--”

“A bluff,” he said, supplying the word. “If I had believed there was the slightest possibility of a fight, I should have made my men take to the woods rather than let you witness it.”

“You shouldn't have let me waste my sympathy,” she protested reproachfully.

“I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us into the Carbonate yards.”

She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.

“That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little valley just above here--an open place where your railroad and Uncle Somerville's run side by side?”

“Yes, it is a mile this side of the canyon head. What about it?”

“How long is it since you have been up there?” she queried.

Winton stopped to think. “I don't know--a week, possibly.”

“Yet if you had not been coming here every evening, you or Mr. Adams would have found time to go--to watch every possible chance of interference, wouldn't you?”

“Perhaps. That was one of the risks I took, a part of the price-paying I spoke of. If anything had happened, I should still be unrepentant.”

“Something _has_ happened. While you have been taking things for granted, Uncle Somerville has been at work day and night. He has built a track right across yours in that little valley, and he keeps a train of cars or something, filled with armed men, standing there all the time!”

Winton gave a low whistle. Then he laughed mirthlessly.

“You are quite sure of this?” he asked. “There is no possibility of your being mistaken?”

“None at all,” she replied. “And I can only defend myself by saying that I didn't know about it until a few minutes ago. What is to be done? But stop; you needn't tell me. I am not worthy of your confidence.”

“You are; you have just proved it. But there isn't anything to be done. The next thing in order is the exit of one John Winton in disgrace. That spur track and engine means a crossing fight which can be prolonged indefinitely, with due vigilance on the part of Mr. Darrah's mercenaries. I'm smashed, Miss Carteret, thoroughly and permanently. Ah, well, it's only one more fool for love. Hadn't we better go in? You'll take cold standing out here.”

She drew herself up and put her hands behind her.

“Is that the way you take it, Mr. Winton?”

The acrid laugh came again.

“Would you have me tear a passion to tatters? My ancestors were not French.”

Trying as the moment was, she could not miss her opportunity.

“How can you tell when you don't know your grandfather's middle name?” she said, half crying.

His laugh at this was less acrid. “Adams again? My grandfather had no middle name. But I mustn't keep you out here in the cold talking genealogies.”

His hand was on the door to open it for her. Like a flash she came between, and her fingers closed over his on the door-knob.

“Wait,” she said. “Have I done all this--humbled myself into the very dust--to no purpose?”

“Not if you will give me the one priceless word I am thirsting for.”

“Oh, how shameless you are!” she cried. “Will nothing serve to arouse the better part of you?”

“There is no better part of any man than his love for a woman. You have aroused that.”

“_Then prove it by going and building your railroad_, Mr. Winton. When you have done that--”

He caught at the word as a drowning man catches at a straw.

“When I have won the fight--Virginia, let me see your eyes--when I have won, I may come back to you?”

“I didn't say anything of the kind! But I will say what I said to Mr. Adams. I like men who _do_ things. Good night.” And before he could reply she had made him open the door for her, and he was left alone on the square-railed platform.

In the gathering-room of the private car Virginia found an atmosphere surcharged with electrical possibilities, felt it and inhaled it, though there was nothing visible to indicate it. The Rajah was buried in the depths of his particular easy-chair, puffing his cigar; Bessie had the Reverend Billy in the tete-a-tete contrivance; and Mrs. Carteret was reading under the Pintsch drop-light at the table.

It was the chaperon who applied the firing spark to the electrical possibilities.

“Didn't I hear you talking to some one out on the platform, Virginia?” she asked.

“Yes, it was Mr. Winton. He came to make his excuses.”

Mr. Somerville Darrah awoke out of his tobacco reverie with a start.

“Hah!” he said fiercely. Then, in his most courteous phrase: “Did I undehstand you to say that Misteh Winton would not faveh us to-night, my deah Virginia?”

“He could not. He has come upon--upon some other difficulty, I believe,” she stammered, steering a perilous course among the rocks of equivocation.

“Mmph!” said the Rajah, rising. “Ah--where is Jastrow?”

The obsequious one appeared, imp-like, at the mention of his name, and received a curt order.

“Go and find Engineer McGrath and his fireman. Tell him I want the engine instantly. Move, seh!”

Virginia retreated to her state-room. In a few minutes she heard her uncle go out; and shortly afterward the Rosemary's engine shook itself free of the car and rumbled away westward. At that, Virginia went back to the others and found a book. But if waiting inactive were difficult, reading was blankly impossible.