Francis Lynde

“ Winton heard the hiss of the escaping air above all the industry clamor; heard, and saw the car start backward. Then he had a flitting glimpse of a man in grimy overclothes scrambling terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone. The fireman had “bled” the air-brake too freely, and the liberated car, gathering momentum with every wheel-turn, surged around the circling spur track and shot out masterless on the steeper gradient of the main line.
Now, for the occupants of a runaway car on a Rocky Mountain canyon line there is death and naught else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Morning in the highest highlands of the Rockies, a morning clear, cold, and tense, with a bell-like quality in the frosty air to make the cracking of a snow-laden spruce-bough resound like a pistol-shot. For Denver and the dwellers on the eastern plain the sun is an hour high; but the hamlet mining-camp of Argentine, with its dovecote railway station and two-pronged siding, still lies in the steel-blue depths of the canyon shadow. ”

“ Massive mountains, dark green to the timber line and dazzling white above it, shut in the narrow valley to right and left. A mimic torrent, ice-bound in the quieter pools, drums and gurgles on its descent midway between two railway embankments, the one to which the station and side-tracks belong, old and well-settled, the other new and as yet unballasted. Just opposite the pygmy station a lateral gorge intersects the main canyon, making a deep gash in the opposing mountain bulwark, around which the new line has to find its way by a looping detour. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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.
Once on his own domain, Adams did the honors of the camp as thoroughly and conscientiously as if the hour held no care heavier than the entertainment of Miss Virginia Carteret. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For another man the informal table gathering might have been easily prohibitive of confidences a deux, even with a Virginia Carteret to help, but Winton was far above the trammelings of time and place. He had eyes and ears only for the sweet-faced, low-voiced young woman beside him, and some of his replies to the others were irrelevant enough to send a smile around the board.
“How very absent-minded Mr. Winton seems to be this evening!” murmured Bessie from her niche between Adams and the Reverend Billy at the farther end of the table. “He isn't quite at his best, is he, Mr. Adams?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a scanty widening of the main canyon a few hundred yards below the station a graders' camp of rude slab shelters is turning out its horde of wild-looking Italians; and on a crooked spur track fronting the shanties blue wood-smoke is curling lazily upward from the kitchen car of a construction train. ”

“ John Winton, C. E., stood in need of a moral tonic, as Adams had so delicately intimated to Miss Bessie Carteret, it was administered in quantity sufficient before he slept on the night of dinner-givings.
For a clear-eyed theorist, free from all heart-trammelings and able to grasp the unsentimental fact, the enemy's new plan of campaign wrote itself quite legibly. With his pick and choice among the time-killing expedients the Rajah could scarcely have found one more to his purpose than the private car Rosemary, including in its passenger list a Miss Virginia Carteret. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the critical instant, when the entire weight of the forward half of the engine was poising for the drop upon the rails, he gave the precise added impulse. The big ten-wheeler coughed hoarsely and spat fire; the driving-wheels made a quick half-turn backward; and a cheer from the onlookers marked the little triumph of mind over matter.
Winton found Miss Carteret holding his overcoat when he swung down from the cab, and he fancied her enthusiasm was tempered with something remotely like embarrassment. But she suffered him to walk back to the private car beside her ”

“ Hammermen!” yelled Winton; and the scattered force rallied instantly.
But now the wrestling fireman had thrown the switch, and at the Rajah's command the Rosemary shot out on the spur to be thrust with locked brakes fairly into the breach left defenseless by the ditched engine. With a mob-roar of wrath the infuriated track-layers made a rush for the new obstruction. But Winton was before them.
“Hold on!” he shouted, bearing them back with outflung arms. “Hold on, men, for God's sake! There are women in that car!” ”

“ 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? ”

“ So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he was able to laugh at the “sudden attack,” as he phrased it, but later, when he and Adams were settled for the day-long run in the Denver sleeper, and the Limited was clanking out over the switches, he brought the talk around with a carefully assumed air of lack-interest to the party in the private car. ”

“ McGrath. Can't we go out on the platform?”
“It's as much as your life is worth,” he asserted, but he opened the door for her.
The car was backing swiftly up the grade with the engine behind serving as a “pusher.” At first the fiercely-driven snow-whirl made Virginia gasp. Then the speed slackened and she could breathe and see.
The shrilling wheels were tracking around a curve into a scanty widening of the canyon. To the left, on the rails of the new line, the big octopod was heaving and grunting in the midst of an army of workmen swarming thick upon the overturned guard engine. ”

“ But Winton was far enough from laughing at her. Why so simple an expedient had not suggested itself instantly he did not stop to inquire. It was enough that the Heaven-born idea had been given.
“Down out of that, Morty!” he cried. “It's one chance in a thousand. Pass the word to the men; I'll be with you in a second.” And when Adams was rousing the track force with the bawling shout of “Ev-erybody!” Winton looked up into the brown eyes. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I am decently in love with my work—a work that not a few wise men have agreed could best be done alone. I don't think there will be any other woman. You see, there is only one Virginia. Shall we go in now?”
She nodded, but when they reached the Rosemary the returning engine was rattling down upon the open siding. Virginia drew back.
“I don't want to meet Uncle Somerville just now,” she confessed. “Can't we climb up to the observation platform at the other end of the car?” ”