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.

"Goodness!" she exclaimed impatiently at last. "How hot you people
keep it in here! Cousin Billy, won't you take a turn with me on the
station platform? I can't breathe!"

Calvert acquiesced eagerly, scenting an opportunity. But when they
were out under the frosty stars he had the good sense to walk her up
and down in the healing silence and darkness for five full minutes
before he ventured to say what was in his mind.

When he spoke it was earnestly and to the purpose, not without
eloquence. He loved her; had always loved her, he thought. Could she
not, with time and the will to try, learn to love him?--not as a
cousin?

She turned quickly and put both hands on his shoulders.

"Oh, Cousin Billy--_don't_!" she faltered brokenly; and he, seeing at
once that he had played the housebreaker where he would fain have been
the welcome guest, took his punishment manfully, drawing her arm in
his and walking her yet other turns up and down the long platform
until his patience and the silence had wrought their perfect work.

"Does it hurt much?" she asked softly, after a long time.

"You would have to change places with me to know just how much it
hurts," he answered. "And yet you haven't left me quite desolate,
Virginia. I still have something left--all I've ever had, I fancy."

"And that is--"

"My love for you, you know. It isn't at all contingent upon your yes
or no; or upon possession--it never has been, I think. It has never
asked much except the right to be."

She was silent for a moment. Then she said: "Cousin Billy, I do
believe that you are the best man that ever lived. And I am
ashamed--ashamed!"

"What for?"

"If I have spoiled you, ever so little, for some truer, worthier
woman."

"You haven't," he responded; "you mustn't take that view of it. 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?"

He said yes, and made the affirmative good by lifting her in his arms
over the high railing. Once safely on the car, she bade him leave her.

"Slip in quietly and they won't notice," she said. "I'll come
presently."

Calvert obeyed, and Virginia stood alone in the darkness. Down in the
Utah construction camp lights were darting to and fro; and before long
she heard the hoarse puffs of the big octopod, betokening activities.

She was shivering a little in the chill wind sliding down from the
snow-peaks, yet she would not go in until she had made sure. In a
little time her patience was rewarded. The huge engine came storming
up the grade on the new line, pushing its three flat-cars, which were
black with clinging men. On the car nearest the locomotive, where the
dazzling beam of the headlight pricked him out for her, stood Winton,
braced against the lurchings of the train over the uneven track.

"God speed you, my--love!" she murmured softly; and when the gloom of
the upper canyon cleft had engulfed man and men and storming engine
she turned to go in.

She was groping for the door-knob in the darkness made thicker by the
glare of the passing headlight when a voice, disembodied for the
moment, said: "Wait a minute, Miss Carteret; I'd like to have a word
with you."

She drew back quickly.

"Is it you, Mr. Jastrow? Let me go in, please."

"In one moment. I have something to say to you--something you ought to
hear."

"Can't it be said on the other side of the door? I am cold--very cold,
Mr. Jastrow."

It was his saving hint, but he would not take it.

"No, it must be said to you alone. We have at least one thing in
common, Miss Carteret--you and I: that is a proper appreciation of the
successful realities. I--"

She stopped him with a quick little gesture of impatience.

"Will you be good enough to stand aside and let me go in?"

The keen breath of the snow-caps was summer-warm in comparison with
the chilling iciness of her manner; but the secretary went on unmoved:

"Success is the only thing worth while in this world. Winton will
fail, but I shan't. And when I do succeed, I shall marry a woman who
can wear the purple most becomingly."

"I hope you may, I'm sure," she answered wearily. "Yet you will excuse
me if I say that I don't understand how it concerns me, or why you
should keep me out here in the cold to tell me about it."

"Don't you? It concerns you very nearly. You are the woman, Miss
Carteret."

"Indeed? And if I decline the honor?"

The contingency was one for which the suitor seemed not entirely
prepared. Yet he evinced a willingness to meet the hypothesis in a
spirit of perfect candor.

"You wouldn't do that, definitely, I fancy. It would be tantamount to
driving me to extremities."

"If you will tell me how I can do it 'definitely,' I shall be most
happy to drive you to extremities, or anywhere else out of my way,"
she said frigidly.

"Oh, I think not," he rejoined. "You wouldn't want me to go and tell
Mr. Darrah how you have betrayed him to Mr. Winton. I had the singular
good fortune to overhear you conversation--yours and Mr. Winton's, you
know; and if Mr. Darrah knew, he would cut you out of his will with
very little compunction, don't you think? And, really, you mustn't
throw yourself away on that sentimental Tommy of an engineer, Miss
Virginia. He'll never be able to give you the position you're fitted
for."

Since French was a dead language to Mr. Arthur Jastrow, he never knew
what it was that Miss Carteret named him. But she left him in no doubt
as to her immediate purpose.

"If that be the case, we would better go and find my uncle at once,"
she said in her softest tone; and before he could object she had led
the way to the Rajah's working-den state-room.

Mr. Darrah was deep in one of the cipher telegrams when they entered,
and he looked up to glare fiercely at one and then the other of the
intruders. Virginia gave her persecutor no time to lodge his
accusation.

"Uncle Somerville, Mr. Winton was here an hour ago, as you know, and I
told him what you had done--what I had helped you do. Also, I sent him
about his business; which is to win his railroad fight if he can. Mr.
Jastrow overheard the conversation, purposely, and as he threatens to
turn informer, I am saving him the trouble. Perhaps I ought to add that
he offered to hold his peace if I would promise to marry him."

What the unlucky Jastrow might have said in his own behalf is not to
be here set down in peaceful black and white. With the final word of
Virginia's explanation the fierce old master of men was up and
clutching for the secretary's throat, and the working complement of
the Rosemary suffered instant loss.

"You'll spy upon a membeh of my family, will you, seh!" he stormed.
"Out with you, bag and baggage, befo' I lose my tempeh and forget what
is due to this young lady you have insulted, seh, with your infamous
proposals! Faveh me instantly, while you have a leg to run with! Go!"

Jastrow disappeared; and when the door closed behind him Virginia
faced her irate clan-chief bravely.

"He was a spy, and he would have been a traitor. But I am little
better. What will you do to me?"

The Rajah's wrath evaporated quickly, and a shrewd smile, not
unkindly, wrinkled the ruddy old face.

"So it was a case of the trappeh trapped, was it, my deah? I'm
sorry--right sorry. I might have known how it would be; a youngeh man
would have known. But you have done no unpahdonable mischief: Misteh
Winton would have found out for himself in a few hours, and we are
ready for him now."

"Oh, dear! Then he will be beaten?"

"Unquestionably. Faveh me by going to bed, my deah. Your roses will
suffeh sadly for all this excitement, I feah. Good night."

XI. THE RIGHT OF WAY

It seemed to Virginia that she had but just fallen asleep when she was
rudely awakened by the jar and grind of the Rosemary's wheels on
snow-covered rails. Drawing the curtain, she found that a new day was
come, gray and misty white in the gusty swirl of a mountain
snow-squall.

Without disturbing the sleeping Bessie, she dressed quickly and
slipped out to see what the early-morning change of base portended.
The common room was empty when she entered it, but before she could
cross to the door the Reverend Billy came in, stamping the snow from
his feet.

"What is it?" she asked eagerly. "Are we off for California?"

"No, it's some more of the war. Winton has outgeneraled us. During the
night he pushed his track up to the disputed crossing, 'rushed' the
guarded engine, and ditched it."

Virginia felt that she ought to be decorously sorry for relationship's
sake, but the effort ended in a little paean of joy.

"But Uncle Somerville--what will he do?"

"He is with McGrath on the engine, getting himself--and us--to the
front in a hurry, as you perceive."

"Isn't it too late to stop Mr. Winton now?"

"I don't know. From what I could overhear I gathered that the ditched
engine is still in the way; that they are trying to roll it over into
the creek. Bless me! McGrath is getting terribly reckless!"--this as a
spiteful lurch of the car flung them both across the compartment.

"Say Uncle Somerville," she amended. "Don't charge it to Mr. 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.

"Goodness! it's like a battle!" she shuddered. As she spoke the
Rosemary stopped with a jerk and McGrath's fireman darted past to set
the spur-track switch.

The points were snow-clogged, and the fireman wrestled with the lever,
saying words. The delay was measurable in heart-beats, but it
sufficed. The big octopod coughed thrice like a mighty giant in a
consumption; the clustering workmen scattered like chaff to a ringing
shout of "Stand clear!" and the obstructing mass of iron and steel
rolled, wallowing and hissing, into the stream.

"Rails to the front! 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!"

The wrathful wave broke and eddied murmurous while a square-shouldered
old man with fierce eyes and huge white mustaches, and with an extinct
cigar between his teeth, clambered down from the Rosemary's engine to
say:

"Hah! a ratheh close connection, eh, Misteh Winton? Faveh me with a
match, if you please, seh. May I assume that you won't tumble my
private car into the ditch?"

Winton was white-hot, but he found a light for the Rajah's cigar,
easing his mind only as he might with Virginia looking on.

"I shall be more considerate of the safety of the ladies than you seem
to be, Mr. Darrah," he retorted. "You are taking long chances in this
game, sir."

The Rajah's laugh rumbled deep in his chest. "Not so vehy much longer
than you have been taking during the past fo'tnight, my deah seh. But
neveh mind; all's fair in love or war, and we appeah to be having a
little of both now up heah in Qua'tz Creek, hah?"

Winton flushed angrily. It was no light thing to be mocked before his
men, to say nothing of Miss Carteret standing within arm's reach on
the railed platform of the Rosemary.

"Perhaps I shall give you back that word before we are through, Mr.
Darrah," he snapped. Then to the eddying mob-wave: "Tools up, boys. We
camp here for breakfast. Branagan, send the Two-fifteen down for the
cook's outfit."

The Rajah dropped his cigar butt in the snow and trod upon it.

"Possibly you will faveh us with your company to breakfast in the
Rosemary, Misteh Winton--you and Misteh Adams. No? Then I bid you a
vehy good morning, gentlemen, and hope to see you lateh." And he swung
up to the steps of the private car.

Half an hour afterward, the snow still whirling dismally, Winton and
Adams were cowering over a handful of hissing embers, drinking their
commissary coffee and munching the camp cook's poor excuse for a
breakfast.

"Jig's up pretty definitely, don't you think?" said Adams, with a
glance around at the idle track force huddling for shelter under the
lee of the flats and the octopod.

Winton shook his head and groaned. "I'm  a ruined man, Morty."

Adams found his cigarette case.

"I guess that's so," he said quite heartlessly. Then: "Hello! what is
our friend the enemy up to now?"

McGrath's fireman was uncoupling the engine from the Rosemary, and Mr.
Somerville Darrah, complacently lighting his after breakfast cigar,
came across to the hissing ember fire.

"A word with you, gentlemen, if you will faveh me," he began. "I am
about to run down to Argentine on my engine, and I propose leaving the
ladies in your cha'ge, Misteh Winton. Will you give me your word of
honeh, seh, that they will not be annoyed in my absence?"

Winton sprang up, losing his temper again.

"It's--well, it's blessed lucky that you know your man, Mr. Darrah!"
he exploded. "Go on about your business--which is to bring another
army of deputy-sheriffs down on us, I take it. You know well enough
that no man of mine will lay a hand on your car so long as the ladies
are in it."

The Rajah thanked him, dismissed the matter with a Chesterfieldian
wave of his hand, climbed to his place in the cab, and the engine
shrilled away around the curve and disappeared in the snow-wreaths.

Adams rose and stretched himself.

"By Jove! when it comes to cheek, pure and unadulterated, commend me
to a Virginia gentleman who has acquired the proper modicum of Western
bluff," he laughed. Then, with a cavernous yawn dating back to the
sleepless night: "Since there is nothing immediately pressing, I
believe I'll go and call on the ladies. Won't you come along for a
while?"

"No!" said Winton savagely; and the assistant lounged off by himself.

Some little time afterward Winton, glooming over his handful of
spitting embers, saw Adams and Virginia come out to stand together on
the observation platform of the Rosemary. They talked long and
earnestly, and when Winton was beginning to add the dull pang of
unreasoning jealousy to his other hurtings, Adams beckoned him. He
went, not unwillingly, or altogether willingly.

"I should think you might come and say 'Good morning' to me, Mr.
Winton. I'm not Uncle Somerville," said Miss Carteret.

Winton said "Good morning," not too graciously, and Adams mocked him.

"Besides being a bear with a sore head, Miss Carteret thinks you're
not much of a hustler, Jack," he said coolly. "She knows the
situation; knows that you were stupid enough to promise not to lay
hands on the car when we could have pushed it out of the way without
annoying anybody. None the less, she thinks that you might find a way
to go on building your railroad without breaking your word to Mr.
Darrah."

Winton put his sore-heartedness far enough behind him to smile and
say: "Perhaps Miss Virginia will be good enough to tell me how."

"I don't know how," she rejoined quickly. "And you'd only laugh at me
if I should tell you what I thought of."

"You might try it and see," he ventured. "I'm desperate enough to take
suggestions from anyone."

"Tell me something first: is your railroad obliged to run straight
along in the middle of this nice little ridge you've been making for
it?"

"Why--no; temporarily, it can run anywhere. But the problem is to get
the track laid beyond this crossing before your uncle gets back with a
trainload of armed guards."

"Any kind of track would do, wouldn't it?--just to secure the
crossing?"

"Certainly; anything that would hold the weight of the octopod. We
shall have to rebuild most of the line, anyway, as soon as the frost
comes out of the ground in the spring."

The brown eyes became far-seeing.

"I was thinking," she said musingly. "There is no time to make another
nice little ridge. But you have piles and piles of logs over
there,"--she meant the cross-ties,--"couldn't you build a sort of
cobhouse ridge with those between your track and Uncle's, and cross
behind the car? Don't laugh, please."

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.

"My debt to you was already very great: I owe you more now," he said.

But she gave him his quittance in a whiplike retort.

"And you will stand here talking about it when every moment is
precious? Go!" she commanded; and he went.

So now we are to conceive the maddest activity leaping into being in
full view of the watchers at the windows of the private car. Winton's
chilled and sodden army, welcoming any battle-cry of action, flew to
the work with a will. In a twinkling the corded piles of cross-ties
had melted to reappear in cobhouse balks bridging an angle from the
Utah embankment to that of the spur track in the rear of the
blockading Rosemary. In briefest time the hammermen were spiking the
rails on the rough-and-ready trestle, and the Italians were bringing
up the crossing-frogs.

But the Rajah, astute colonel of industry, had not left himself
defenseless. On the contrary, he had provided for this precise
contingency by leaving McGrath's fireman in mechanical command on the
Rosemary. If Winton should attempt to build around the private car,
the fireman was to wait till the critical moment: then he was to
lessen the pressure on the automatic air-brakes and let the car drop
back down the grade just far enough to block the new crossing.

So it came about that this mechanical lieutenant waited, laughing in
his sleeve, until he saw the Italians coming with the crossing-frogs.
Then, judging the time to be fully ripe, he ducked under the Rosemary
to "bleed" the air-brake.

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. Winton saw, in a phantasmagoric
flash of second sight, the meteor flight of the heavy car; saw the
Reverend Billy's ineffectual efforts to apply the hand-brakes, if by
good hap he should even guess that there were any hand-brakes; saw the
car, bounding and lurching, keeping to the rails, mayhap, for some few
miles below Argentine, where it would crash headlong into the upward
climbing Carbonate train, and all would end.

In unreasoning misery, he did the only thing that offered: ran blindly
down his own embankment, hoping nothing but that he might have one
last glimpse of Virginia clinging to the hand-rail before she should
be lost to him for ever.

But as he ran a thought white-hot from the furnace of despair fell
into his brain to set it ablaze with purpose. Beyond the litter of
activities the octopod was standing, empty of its crew. Bounding up
into the cab, he released the brake and sent the great engine flying
down the track of the new line.

In the measuring of the first mile the despair-born thought took shape
and form. If he could outpace the runaway on the parallel line, stop
the octopod and dash across to the C. G. R. track ahead of the
Rosemary, there was one chance in a million that he might fling
himself upon the car in mid flight and alight with life enough left to
help Calvert with the hand-brakes.

Now, in the most unhopeful struggle it is often the thing least hoped
for that comes to pass. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a
minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the
octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking
past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man
standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the
tableau; then man and station and lurching car were left behind, and
the fierce strife to gain the needed mile of lead went on.

Three miles more of the surging, racking, nerve-killing race and
Winton had his hand's-breadth of lead and had picked his place for the
million-chanced wrestle with death. It was at the C. G. R. station of
Tierra Blanca, just below a series of sharp curves which he hoped
might check a little the arrow-like flight of the runaway.

Twenty seconds later the telegraph operator at the lonely little way
station of Tierra Blanca saw a heroic bit of man-play. The
upward-bound Carbonate train was whistling in the gorge below when out
of the snow-wreaths shrouding the new line a big engine shot down to
stop with fire grinding from the wheels, and a man dropped from the
high cab to dash across to the station platform.

At the same instant a runaway passenger car thundered out of the
canyon above. The man crouched, flung himself at it in passing, missed
the forward hand-rail, caught the rear, was snatched from his feet and
trailed through the air like the thong of a whip-lash, yet made good
his hold and clambered on.

This was all the operator saw, but when he had snapped his key and run
out he heard the shrill squeal of the brakes on the car and knew that
the man had not risked his life for nothing.

And on board the Rosemary? Winton, spent to the last breath, was lying
prone on the railed platform, where he had fallen when the last twist
had been given to the shrieking brakes.

"Run, Calvert! Run ahead and--stop--the--up-train!" he gasped; then
the light went out of the gray eyes and Virginia wept unaffectedly and
fell to dabbling his forehead with handfuls of snow.

"Help me get him in to the divan, Cousin Billy," said Virginia, when
all was over and the Rosemary was safely coupled in ahead of the
upcoming train to be slowly pushed back to Argentine.

But Winton opened his eyes and struggled to his feet unaided.

"Not yet," he said. "I've left my automobile on the other side of the
creek; and besides, I have a railroad to build. My respects to Mr.
Darrah, and you may tell him I'm not beaten yet." And he swung over
the railing and dropped off to mount the octopod and to race it back
to the front.

Three days afterward, to a screaming of smelter whistles and other
noisy demonstrations of mining-camp joy, the Utah Short Line laid the
final rail of its new Extension in the Carbonate yards.

The driving of the silver spike accomplished, Winton and Adams slipped
out of the congratulatory throng and made their way across the
C. G. R. tracks to a private car standing along the siding. Its railed
platform, commanding a view of the civic celebration, had its quota of
onlookers--a fierce-eyed old man with huge mustaches, an athletic
young clergyman, two Bisques, and a goddess.

"Climb up, Misteh Winton, and you, Misteh Adams; climb up and join
us," said the fierce-eyed one heartily. "Virginia, heah, thinks we
ought to call one anotheh out, but I tell her--"

What the Rajah had told his niece is of small account to us. But what
Winton whispered in her ear when he had taken his place beside her is
more to the purpose of this history.

"I have built my railroad, as you told me to, and now I have come for
my--"

"Hush!" she said softly. "Can't you wait?"

"No."

"Shameless one!" she murmured.

But when the Rajah proposed an adjournment to the gathering-room of
the car, and to luncheon therein, he surprised them standing
hand-in-hand and laughed.

"Hah, you little rebel!" he said. "Do you think you dese've that block
of stock I promised you when you should marry? Anseh me, my deah."

She blushed and shook her head, but the brown eyes were dancing.

The Rajah opened the car door with his courtliest bow.

"Nevertheless, you shall have it, my deah Virginia, if only to remind
an old man of the time when he was simple enough to make a business
confederate of a cha'ming young woman. Straight on, Misteh Adams;
afteh you, Misteh Winton."