Part 18

The big guest smoked reflectively for a full minute or more before he said: “No jangle with the Copah city authorities about any trackage rights in the town, or street crossings, or anything of that sort?”

“Not that I have ever heard of. The T-C. has its own Copah yard, and has a switching connection with the Pacific Southwestern yard tracks; though, naturally, there is little exchange of business between the two competitive systems.”

“Do they connect with you?” asked Sprague.

“Not directly. Our yard was originally an independent lay-out, lying a mile to the west of town. When the Short Line became a grand division of the Pacific Southwestern, the two yards, ours and the P. S-W., were operated as one, though they are still separate lay-outs.”

“I see. What else does Benson say?”

“He has been asking questions and chewing the rag with anybody who would talk, he says; but we all know Jack. He is too downright and bluff to be much of a detective.”

Maxwell turned to his desk and began on the ever-present pile of waiting work; and the big expert settled himself more deeply into his chair and smoked on with his gaze fixed upon the ceiling gas-pendant. After the lapse of many minutes he said: “Have you a blue-print of the Copah yards, Dick?”

Maxwell rose and went to a filing-case in the corner of the office. After a little search he found the required blue-print and gave it to Sprague, explaining the locations and the relative positions of the three railroad yards. The expert studied the map thoughtfully, even going so far as to scrutinize the fine lettering on it with the help of a small pocket magnifying-glass.

“And right over here by the river is where you say the new camp has been pitched?” he asked, indicating the spot with the handle of the magnifier.

“Yes; Benson says it’s at the south end of the bridge, and just west of the T-C. bridge siding.”

Sprague looked up quickly. “Did Benson say they had an electric-light outfit for night work?”

“Why, no; I don’t remember that he did.”

“Go and ask him,” said Sprague shortly; and the superintendent, who had learned to take the expert’s suggestions without question, left the office to do it.

He was back in a few minutes, with the light of a newly kindled excitement in his eyes.

“By Jove, Calvin, you’re a wizard!” he exclaimed. “Your guess is better than another man’s eyesight. They’ve not only got the light outfit--they’ve strung it up and gone to work! Benson says they are laying a track out across the valley of the Pannikin like this,” and he traced a curving line on the blue-print, which Sprague was still holding spread out on his knees.

Sprague nodded slowly. “That is move Number One,” he said. “Dick, you’re in for a fight to a finish, this time. They’ve got you foul in some way, and they are so sure of it that they are already beginning to take possession. Don’t you see what this new track means?”

“No, I don’t,” Maxwell confessed, with a frown of perplexity.

“You will see before to-morrow night. Pull yourself together, old man, and do a little clear-headed reasoning. Why are these people starting out to build a railroad at ten o’clock Saturday night? Surely you’ve had experience enough in crossing fights to know what that means!”

Maxwell straightened up and swore out of a full heart.

“You mean that they are going to cut a crossing through the Southwestern main line, and do it on Sunday, when our people can’t stop them with a court injunction?”

“You’ve surrounded at least half of it,” said the expert. “The other half will come later. If I wasn’t going away to-morrow----”

Maxwell walked to the window and stared across at the flaming arc light hanging in front of the Hotel Topaz on the opposite side of the plaza. When he turned again, Sprague had rolled the blue-print into a tube and was laying it on the desk.

“Calvin, you’ve had time to think it over,” said the man at the window. “You haven’t made it very plain for me, but I can understand that it’s friendship against--against the girl. I’m human enough to know what that means, but----”

Sprague was holding up one of his big square-fingered hands in protest.

“I have been thinking it over, Dick,” he admitted gently. “I’ll stay--for the line-up, anyway. But it’s only fair to warn you that I may drop out at any minute; perhaps when the game is going dead against you. Now we’ll get action. You go back to the wire and keep in touch with Benson. We want to know at the earliest possible moment exactly what it is that the T-C. people are trying to do. While you’re wiring, I’ll go out and try to find Stillings.”

This was the situation at ten o’clock on Saturday night. At the nine-o’clock Sunday morning breakfast in the Topaz café, when Maxwell, hollow-eyed and haggard from his night’s vigil at the wires, next had speech with Sprague, the news from the seat of war at Copah was sufficiently exciting.

As Maxwell had predicted, the Transcontinental track-layers had built up to the Southwestern main line, and had finally succeeded in cutting a crossing through it, though not without a fight. The Southwestern force, with Leckhard, the division superintendent, at its head, had resisted as it could. Since it was past midnight, with no hope of obtaining legal help until Monday morning, Leckhard had “spotted” a locomotive on the crossing, and when the men in charge of it were overborne by numbers, the engine had been derailed and “killed” before it was abandoned.

The stubborn resistance had purchased nothing more than a short delay. The marauders had a wrecking-crane as part of their equipment; and half an hour after its abandonment the derailed Southwestern engine had been toppled over into the ditch, and the track-layers were at work installing the crossing frogs.

“And after that?” queried Sprague, when Maxwell had told of the losing fight at the main line crossing.

“After that they went on building across the valley and heading for the western end of our yard. At the last report, which came about eight o’clock, they had less than a mile of steel to lay before they would be on our right-of-way. Benson is crazy. He is yelling at me now to petition the governor for the militia.”

“You haven’t done anything?”

“There isn’t anything to do. They are on neutral ground, now, and will be until they reach our right-of-way--if that is what they are heading for. We have no manner of right to interfere with them until they become actual trespassers; and as for that, no physical force we could muster would stop them. Benson says there are between four and five hundred men in that track gang, and many of them are armed.”

Sprague nodded. “It is a fight to a finish, as I told you last night. And they have the advantage because we don’t know yet where or how they are going to hit us. Have you communicated with Ford?”

“I have tried to; but I don’t get any reply.”

“Tally!” said the big man on the opposite side of the table. “I’ve been having the same kind of bad luck. I can’t locate Stillings.”

“Did you try his house?”

“I did that first. His family is out of town, and he has been stopping at the club. But nobody there seems to know anything about him. A little after midnight I found your division detective, young Tarbell, and put him on the job. We’re needing Stillings, and needing him badly.”

“Tarbell hasn’t reported back yet?”

“Not yet; it is beginning to look as if he had dropped out, too. But the day is still young. You’d better go upstairs and get a little sleep. I’ll stay on deck and call you if you are needed.”

Maxwell had finished his simple breakfast and he took the good advice. It was nine hours later, and the electrics were twinkling yellow in the sunset pinks and grays flooding the quiet Sunday evening streets and the railroad plaza, when he came down and found Sprague just ready to go in to dinner.

“News!” demanded the superintendent eagerly. “I had no idea of wasting the day this way.”

Sprague made him wait until they were seated at a table for two in the corner of the café.

“The Copah fight is over, and the T-C. people have broken into your yards with their new track,” the expert announced briefly. “Benson had to give up and go to bed about noon, but Leckhard has kept us posted. The track is in, and frogged to a connection with your main line; and the entire attacking force has camped down at the two points of trespass; presumably to keep you and Leckhard from interfering and tearing up their job. Move Number One, whatever it may mean, is a move accomplished.”

“I can’t understand; I can’t begin to understand!” said Maxwell, in despair. And then: “No word yet from Ford?”

“No; and what is more to the point, there is none from Stillings--nor from Tarbell. I’m beginning to think that this is a bigger game than any we’ve played yet, Dick. I dug up Editor Kendall, of _The Tribune_, this afternoon, and had a little heart-to-heart talk with him. There is big trouble of some sort in the air; he has smelled it, but he can’t tell what it is. He has his young men out everywhere, ‘on suspicion,’ and he has promised to keep in touch with us up to the time his paper goes to press.”

“That ought to help us to get at the facts,” said the superintendent. “Kendall is our friend, and he has some mighty keen young fellows on his staff. By the way, there’s one of them now--just coming in at the door. He’s looking for somebody, too.”

The young incomer was not long in finding his man. With a nod to the head-waiter, he came across to Sprague’s table. “A note for you, Mr. Sprague--from Mr. Kendall,” he said. “There’s no answer, I believe,” and he went on to another table and began to chat with two other young men, strangers to Maxwell, who had come in on the evening train.

Sprague glanced at his note and passed it across the table. Maxwell read it and found that it merely added to the mysteries without offering anything in the way of enlightenment.

“Dear Sprague:

“Have followed your suggestion, and our young men have spotted at least a score of the strangers at the different hotels. Nobody seems to know any of them, and they won’t talk. You will find a list of names, copied from the hotel registers, on enclosed slip. It has occurred to me that Maxwell might know some of them, if your suspicions are well founded.

“Kendall.”

Maxwell frowned over the list for a moment before handing it back.

“A few of them are familiar,” he said. “Tom Carmody is a division superintendent on the west end of the T-C., and this man Hunniwell used to be in their legal department. Vance Jackson is, or used to be, Carmody’s chief despatcher; and--why, say! this is a T-C. crowd; here’s Andy Cochran, their Canyon Division trainmaster.”

“Any more?” asked Sprague quietly.

“No; the other names are all strange to me.”

Sprague took the list and pointed with a square-ended forefinger to one of the names.

“This man Dimmock; you don’t know him?” he queried.

“No.”

“Well, I don’t know him, either; but I happen to know something about him. Two years ago I was doing a little soil work down in Oklahoma. It was during the time they were having the scrap with the oil companies. Mr. Dimmock was there, ostensibly as an independent capitalist from the East looking for bargains in oil-wells, but really as a representative of the trust.”

“Is this the same man?”

The expert held his fork pointing diagonally across his plate. “Follow the line of this fork,” he directed in low tones, “and you’ll see him--at the farther table by the door.”

Maxwell looked and saw a generously built, smooth-shaven, cold-featured man who looked like big money, dining at a table alone. The big-money look was not obtrusive; but it was sufficiently apparent in the city cut of the Sunday broadcloth, in the spotless linen, and not less in the attitude of the obsequious waiter who hovered around the great man’s chair.

“I took the trouble to look up Mr. Dimmock in the Oklahoma period,” Sprague went on. “I found that he was pretty well known in New York as the right hand of a certain great money lord whose name we needn’t mention here. That being the case, it is hardly necessary to add that his presence in Brewster at this particular crisis is a bit ominous.”

“Have you told Kendall this about Dimmock?” asked the superintendent.

“No; but he’ll be pretty sure to trace the gentleman for himself. Where a question of pure news is involved, Kendall is apt to be found running well ahead of the field.”

“But that doesn’t help us out any,” Maxwell objected.

“No. We seem to be forced to await developments; and that, Richard, is always a mark of the losing side. I wish to goodness Stillings would turn up.”

“It’s odd about Bob. He doesn’t often drop out without leaving a trail behind him. Have you finished? Then let’s go over to the office and see if there is any further word from Benson or Leckhard.”

It was when they were leaving the dining-room together that they came upon Tarbell, the ex-terror of Montana cattle thieves. The young man was way-worn and dusty, and his eyes were red for want of sleep. Sprague’s question was shot-like.

“You’ve found him, Archer?”

“Yep; as good as,” was the short rejoinder.

“Turn it loose,” commanded Sprague.

“He’s at the bottom of an old prospect hole up on Mount Baldwin; him and Mr. Maxwell’s brother-in-law, Billy Starbuck. I had to come back to town to get a rope to pull ’em out.”

“What?” said Maxwell. “How did they get there?”

The young special deputy shook his head.

“I don’t know the whys an’ wherefores any more ’n a goat,” he said simply. “I got onto it through the barkeep’ at the road-house out on the Topaz pike. He said a bunch o’ fellas came along in an auto late last night and stopped for drinks. They come in two at a time, and two of ’em didn’t come in at all. Just as they was startin’ off, there was a scrap o’ some sort in the auto, and the barkeep’, who was lookin’ out o’ the window, swore to me he got a glimpse o’ Mr. Stillings. I found the auto tracks and followed ’em. They left the road this side o’ the lake, crossed the Gloria on the bridge, and shoved that machine up an old wood trail on Baldwin.”

“Well, go on,” said Maxwell, impatiently.

“I found where they’d stopped and took Mr. Stillings and Billy out o’ the car; and it sure looked as if there’d been another scrap, the way the bushes was tore up. About a quarter back from the trail I found the hole. Starbuck hollered up at me when I peeked in. I couldn’t see ’em none, but Billy he said they was both there, and wasn’t hurt none to speak of--only in their feelin’s. He told me to chase back and get a rope.”

Maxwell looked at his watch. “How deep is this hole, Archer?”

“’Bout a hundred foot, or maybe more.”

“We’ll get a car and go after them,” was the superintendent’s instant decision. “You say this was last night; have they had anything to eat?”

“Yep; Billy said a basket o’ grub had been lowered down to ’em a little spell after they was chucked in.”

“All right. Go over to the shops and get a coil of rope out of the wrecking-car, and I’ll get an auto. Want to go along, Calvin?”

“Sure,” was the prompt reply.

Maxwell, being a reasonably wealthy mine owner, as well as the superintendent of the railroad, kept two cars; a runabout and a big touring-machine which, in the absence of his family, were both housed in a down-town garage. In the big car the twenty-mile drive over the Topaz Lake pike was quickly made.

Just before they came to the bridge over the Gloria, they passed an auto with two men in it going toward town. Oddly enough, as it seemed, the in-bound car gave them a wide berth, steering almost into the ditch at the passing, and speeding up to a racing clip as soon as the ditched machine had been yanked back into the roadway. Tarbell, who was driving the Maxwell car, stopped, jumped out, and examined the tracks of the other car by the help of a lighted match.

“That’s them,” he said laconically, when he resumed the steering-wheel. “That was the same car. It’s got a set o’ them new-fangled tires with creepers on ’em.”

“Hurry!” snapped Maxwell. “We don’t know what they’ve been doing to Stillings and Billy, this time.”

Happily they soon found that the evening visit of the two unknown men to the abandoned prospect shaft had been charitable rather than malevolent. Stillings, who was the first of the two captives to be hauled out of the dark pit on the mountain side, told them that another basket of food had just been lowered by a string into the shaft. And when Starbuck came up he brought the basket with him.

Singularly enough, the two rescued ones had no explanation to offer; or, at least, none that served to explain anything. It transpired that they had dined together in the town house of the club the evening before, and had afterward gone to the theatre together. After the play they had taken a taxi to go to Stillings’s house in the suburbs to sleep. An auto had followed them, and when they had dismissed the taxi they had been set upon by a number of masked men who tumbled out of the pursuing car. Since they had no weapons, they were quickly overpowered, thrown into the car, carried off to the mountains, and dumped into the prospect hole, the rope by which they had been lowered being thrown in after them. That was all.

“And you don’t know what it was for?” asked Sprague, when they were rolling evenly back to the city with Starbuck at the steering-wheel.

“No more than you do,” was the lawyer’s answer. “Billy and I have speculated over it all day--having no other way of amusing ourselves--and it’s a perfectly blind trail. Billy says he knows I must have been the one they were after, and I say he must have been the one. You can take your choice.”

At the club town house the two rescued ones were set down, and Tarbell was released to go and get his well-earned rest after the twenty-four-hour task of shadow work.

“Get yourself in shape to go on an advisory committee with us as soon as you can, Robert,” was Sprague’s injunction to the attorney; and then Maxwell drove down to the railroad building, and the expert was with him when he went up to the despatcher’s office.

There was no more news from the Copah seat of war, two hundred miles to the eastward, or, at most, nothing different. The huge alien track-laying force was still guarding the crossing through the Southwestern main line and the new junction with the Nevada Short Line in the western yards. Leckhard reported that Benson was sleeping off his fatigues of the previous night, and said that all was quiet on the late battle-ground.

“And still no word from Ford!” said Maxwell, as he and Sprague, having put the car up at the garage, walked back to the hotel. “By and large, Calvin, that is the most mysterious thing in the bunch. I can’t understand it.”

“Unless I am much mistaken, we shall all understand many things to-morrow that we can’t appreciate to-night,” was Sprague’s prediction; and long after Maxwell had gone back to his office to put in a make-up period at his desk, the big-bodied man from Washington sat out on the loggia porch of the hotel smoking in thoughtful solitude and staring absently at the unwinking eyes of the mast-head electrics in the railroad yard diagonally opposite.

The Monday morning dawned bright and fair, as a vast majority of the mornings do in the favored inter-mountain paradise known as Timanyoni Park. Notwithstanding his long Sunday sleep, Maxwell came down late to his breakfast, and the café waiter told him that Sprague had eaten at his usually early hour and was gone.

While he was waiting to be served, the superintendent glanced through the morning _Tribune_. There was a rather exciting first-page news story of the track-laying fight at Copah. The story was evidently an Associated Press despatch, and was carefully non-committal in its reference to the Transcontinental’s purpose in rushing the new trackage through to a connection with the Nevada Short Line yards. None the less, the impression was given that the Southwestern’s opposition to the move had been only perfunctory and for public effect. Also, the impression was conveyed that the Copah public, at least, believed that there was a secret understanding between the two railroad corporations.

Turning to the inside pages, Maxwell found no editorial comment on the news story, and he was still wondering why Editor Kendall had missed his chance when Stillings came in and took the chair at the end of the table.

“They told me I’d find you here,” said the lawyer, “and I wanted to have a word with you before the wheels begin to go round. This is our day in court on the Hixon damage suit, and we’ll have to fish or cut bait this time. In all probability, we sha’n’t be able to get another postponement, and if we let the case come to trial, it’s all off. The jury will give Hixon his verdict, if only for the reason that he is one man fighting a corporation. The only question is, shall I try to compromise before it is too late?”

“Is there any chance for a compromise?” asked Maxwell.

“I don’t know positively. Bletchford was willing a few weeks ago, but his figure was so high that I refused to talk to him.”

“It’s a hold-up!” snapped the superintendent shortly. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“All right,” said the attorney, rising to go. “I thought I’d give you one last chance at it. The case is called for ten o’clock in Judge Watson’s court. If you’re foot-loose, you might come up and see us lose ten thousand dollars. I guess that is what it will come to.” And then, as he was turning to go: “By the way, that was a mighty cold-blooded thing the T-C. people did yesterday, wasn’t it? What does it mean?”

“If Sprague hasn’t told you, I’m sure I can’t.”

“I haven’t seen Sprague. He left a note at the office this morning, saying he’d be around later; but he hasn’t shown up yet. Will you come over to the court-house and see the jury sand-bag us?”

Quite naturally, the hard-working superintendent had no notion of wasting his forenoon in a court-room, and he said so tersely. And beyond Stillings’s departure and the finishing of the late breakfast, he went across to his office and plunged into the day’s tasks.

There was an unusual quantity of the work that morning, it seemed, and no sooner was he through with one file of referred papers than Calmaine, the chief clerk, was ready with another. Only once during the forenoon was the steady office grind lightened by an interruption from the outside world. At ten o’clock Benson wired from Copah, saying that the T-C. track-layers were at work again, carefully surfacing and ballasting the new track as if it were to be a permanency. Also, the chief engineer asked if any legal steps had been taken looking to the prevention of further trespass.

Maxwell broke the routine pace long enough to dictate to Calmaine the reply to Benson’s asking. It stated the facts briefly. No legal steps had as yet been taken. A full report of the intrusion had gone to the Pacific Southwestern head-quarters in New York, and no action would be taken until New York had spoken.

It was a little before noon when Calmaine carried away the final files of claim correspondence with the superintendent’s notations on them, and Maxwell sat back in his chair and relighted his cigar, which had gone out many times during the stressful morning. In the act the door of the private office suddenly opened and the heavy-set, neatly groomed gentleman whom Sprague had pointed out at the hotel dinner-table the previous evening walked in and took the chair at the desk end, removing his hat and wiping his brow with a handkerchief filmy enough to have figured as the _mouchoir_ of a fine lady.

“Mr. Maxwell, I believe?” he said, dropping a card bearing the single line, “C. P. Dimmock,” on the desk.

“That is my name,” returned Maxwell, bristling with a wholly unaccountable prickling of antagonism.