While Adams was dispensing commissary tea in iron-stone china cups to his two guests in the “dinkey” field office, his chief, taking the Rosemary's night run in reverse in the company of Town-Marshal Biggin, was turning the Rajah's coup into a small Utah profit.

Having come upon the ground late the night before, and from the opposite direction, he had seen nothing of the extension grade west of Argentine. Hence the enforced journey to Carbonate only anticipated an inspection trip which he had intended to make as soon as he had seated Adams firmly in the track-laying saddle.

Not to miss his opportunity, at the first curve beyond Argentine he passed his cigar-case to Biggin and asked permission to ride on the rear platform of the day-coach for inspection purposes.

“Say, pardner, what do you take me fer, anyhow?” was the reproachful rejoinder.

“For a gentleman in disguise,” said Winton promptly.

“Sim'larly, I do you; savvy? You tell me you ain't goin' to stampede, and you ride anywhere you blame please. See? This here C. G. R. outfit ain't got no surcingle on me.”

Winton smiled.

“I haven't any notion of stampeding. As it happens, I'm only a day ahead of time. I should have made this run to-morrow of my own accord to have a look at the extension grade. You will find me on the rear platform when you want me.”

“Good enough,” was the reply; and Winton went to his post of observation.

Greatly to his satisfaction, he found that the trip over the C. G. R. answered every purpose of a preliminary inspection of the Utah grade beyond Argentine. For seventeen of the twenty miles the two lines were scarcely more than a stone's throw apart, and when Biggin joined him at the junction above Carbonate he had his note-book well filled with the necessary data.

“Make it, all right?” inquired the friendly bailiff.

“Yes, thanks. Have another cigar?”

“Don't care if I do. Say, that old fire-eater back yonder in the private car has got a mighty pretty gal, ain't he?”

“The young lady is his niece,” said Winton, wishing that Mr. Biggin would find other food for comment.

“I don't care; she's pretty as a Jersey two-year-old.”

“It's a fine day,” observed Winton; and then, to background Miss Carteret effectually as a topic: “How do the people of Argentine feel about the opposition to our line?”

“They're red-hot; you can put your money on that. The C. G. R.'s a sure-enough tail-twister where there ain't no competition. Your road'll get every pound of ore in the camp if it ever gets through.”

Winton made a mental note of this up-cast of public opinion, and set it over against the friendly attitude of the official Mr. Biggin. It was very evident that the town-marshal was serving the Rajah's purpose only because he had to.

“I suppose you stand with your townsmen on that, don't you?” he ventured.

“Now you're shouting: that's me.”

“Then if that is the case, we won't take this little holiday of ours any harder than we can help. When the court business is settled—it won't take very long—you are to consider yourself my guest. We stop at the Buckingham.”

“Oh, we do, do we? Say, pardner, that's white—mighty white. If I'd 'a' been an inch or so more'n half awake this morning when that old b'iler-buster's hired man routed me out, I'd 'a' told him to go to blazes with his warrant. Nex' time I will.”

Winton shook his head. “There isn't going to be any 'next time,' Peter, my son,” he prophesied. “When Mr. Darrah gets fairly down to business he'll throw bigger chunks than the Argentine town-marshal at us.”

By this time the train was slowing into Carbonate, and a few minutes after the stop at the crowded platform they were making their way up the single bustling street of the town to the court-house.

“Ever see so many tin-horns and bunco people bunched in all your round-ups?” said Biggin, as they elbowed through the uneasy shifting groups in front of the hotel.

“Not often,” Winton admitted. “But it's the luck of the big camps: they are the dumping-grounds of the world while the high pressure is on.”

The ex-range-rider turned on the courthouse steps to look the sidewalk loungers over with narrowing eyes.

“There's Sheeny Mike and Big Otto and half a dozen others right there in front o' the Buckingham that couldn't stay to breathe twice in Argentine. And this town's got a po-lice!”—the comment with lip-curling scorn.

“It also has a county court which is probably waiting for us,” said Winton; whereupon they went in to appease the offended majesty of the law.

As Winton had predicted, his answer to the court summons was a mere formality. On parting with his chief at the Argentine station platform, Adams' first care had been to wire news of the arrest to the Utah headquarters. Hence Winton found the company's attorney waiting for him in Judge Whitcomb's courtroom, and his release on an appearance bond was only a matter of moments.

The legal affair dismissed, there ensued a weary interval of time-killing. There was no train back to Argentine until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, and the hours dragged heavily for the two, who had nothing to do but wait. Biggin endured his part of it manfully till the midday dinner had been discussed; then he drifted off with one of Winton's cigars between his teeth, saying that he should “take poison” and shoot up the town if he could not find some more peaceful means of keeping his blood in circulation.

It was a little after three o'clock, and Winton was sitting at the writing-table in the lobby of the hotel elaborating his hasty notebook data of the morning's inspection, when a boy came in with a telegram. The young engineer was not so deeply engrossed in his work as to be deaf to the colloquy.

“Mr. John Winton? Yes, he is here somewhere,” said the clerk in answer to the boy's question; and after an identifying glance: “There he is—over at the writing-table.”

Winton turned in his chair and saw the boy coming toward him; also he saw the ruffian pointed out by Biggin from the court-house steps and labeled “Sheeny Mike” lounging up to the clerk's desk for a whispered exchange of words with the bediamonded gentleman behind it.

What followed was cataclysmic in its way. The lounger took three staggering lurches toward Winton, brushed the messenger boy aside, and burst out in a storm of maudlin invective.

“Sign yerself 'Winton' now, do yet ye lowdown, turkey-trodden—”

“One minute,” said Winton curtly, taking the telegram from the boy and signing for it.

“I'll give ye more'n ye can carry away in less'n half that time—see?” was the minatory retort; and the threat was made good by an awkward buffet which would have knocked the engineer out of his chair if he had remained in it.

Now Winton's eyes were gray and steadfast, but his hair was of that shade of brown which takes the tint of dull copper in certain lights, and he had a temper which went with the red in his hair rather than with the gray in his eyes. Wherefore his attempt to placate his assailant was something less than diplomatic.

“You drunken scoundrel!” he snapped. “If you don't go about your business and let me alone, I'll turn you over to the police with a broken bone or two!”

The bully's answer was a blow delivered straight from the shoulder—too straight to harmonize with the fiction of drunkenness. Winton saw the sober purpose in it and went battle-mad, as a hasty man will. Being a skilful boxer,—which his antagonist was not,—he did what he had to do neatly and with commendable despatch. Down, up; down, up; down a third time, and then the bystanders interfered.

“Hold on!”

“That'll do!”

“Don't you see he's drunk?”

“Enough's as good as a feast—let him go.”

Winton's blood was up, but he desisted, breathing threatenings. Whereat Biggin shouldered his way into the circle.

“Pay your bill and let's hike out o' this, pronto!” he said in a low tone. “You ain't got no time to fool with a Carbonate justice shop.”

But Winton was not to be brought to his senses so easily.

“Run away from that swine? Not if I know it. Let him take it into court if he wants to. I'll be there, too.”

The beaten one was up now and apparently looking for an officer.

“I'm takin' ye all to witness,” he rasped. “I was on'y askin' him to cash up what he lost to me las' night, and he jumps me. But I'll stick him if there's any law in this camp.”

Now all this time Winton had been holding the unopened telegram crumpled in his fist, but when Biggin pushed him out of the circle and thrust him up to the clerk's desk, he bethought him to read the message. It was Virginia's warning, signed by Adams, and a single glance at the closing sentence was enough to cool him suddenly.

“Pay the bill, Biggin, and join me in the billiard-room, quick!” he whispered, pressing money into the town-marshal's hand and losing himself in the crowd. And when Biggin had obeyed his instructions: “Now for a back way out of this, if there is one. We'll have to take to the hills till train time.”

They found a way through the bar and out into a side street leading abruptly up to the spruce-clad hills behind the town. Biggin held his peace until they were safe from immediate danger of pursuit. Then his curiosity got the better of him.

“Didn't take you more'n a week to change your mind about pullin' it off with that tinhorn scrapper in the courts, did it?”

“No,” said Winton.

“'Tain't none o' my business, but I'd like to know what stampeded you.”

“A telegram,”—shortly. “It was a put-up job to have me locked up on a criminal charge, and so hold me out another day.”

Biggin grinned. “The old b'iler-buster again. Say, he's a holy terror, ain't he?”

“He doesn't mean to let me build my railroad if he can help it.”

The ex-cowboy found his sack of chip tobacco and dexterously rolled a cigarette in a bit of brown wrapping-paper.

“If that's the game, Mr. Sheeny Mike, or his backers, will be most likely to play it to a finish, don't you guess?”

“How?”

“By havin' a po-liceman layin' for you at the train.”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“Well, I can think you out of it, I reckon. The branch train is a 'commodation, and it'll stop most anywhere if you throw up your hand at it. We can take out through the woods and across the hills, and mog up the track a piece. How'll that do?”

“It will do for me, but there is no need of your tramping when you can just as well ride.”

But now that side of Mr. Peter Biggin which endears him and his kind to every man who has ever shared his lonely round-ups, or broken bread with him in his comfortless shack, came uppermost.

“What do you take me fer?” was the way it vocalized itself; but there was more than a formal oath of loyal allegiance in the curt question.

“For a man and a brother,” said Winton heartily; and they set out together to waylay the outgoing train at some point beyond the danger limit.

It was accomplished without further mishap, and the short winter day was darkening to twilight when the train came in sight and the engineer slowed to their signal. They climbed aboard, and when they had found a seat in the smoker the chief of construction spoke to the ex-cowboy as to a friend.

“I hope Adams has knocked out a good day's work for us,” he said.

“Your pardner with the store hat and the stinkin' cigaroots?—he's all right,” said Biggin; and it so chanced that at the precise moment of the saying the subject of it was standing with the foreman of track-layers at a gap in the new line just beyond and above the Rosemary's siding at Argentine, his day's work ended, and his men loaded on the flats for the run down to camp over the lately-laid rails of the lateral loop.

“Not such a bad day, considering the newness of us and the bridge at the head of the gulch,” he said, half to himself. And then more pointedly to the foreman: “Bridge-builders to the front at the first crack of dawn, Mike. Why wasn't this break filled in the grading?”

“Sure, sorr, 'tis a dhrain it is,” said the Irishman; “from the placer up beyant,” he added, pointing to a washed-out excoriation on the steep upper slope of the mountain. “Major Evarts did be tellin' us we'd have the lawyers afther us hot-fut again if we didn't be lavin' ut open the full width.”

“Mmph!” said Adams, looking the ground over with a critical eye. “It's a bad bit. It wouldn't take much to bring that whole slide down on us if it wasn't frozen solid. Who owns the placer?”

“Two fellies over in Carbonate. The company did be thryin' to buy the claim, but the sharps wouldn't sell—bein' put up to hold ut by thim C. G. R. divils. It's more throuble we'll be havin' here, I'm thinking.”

While they lingered a shrill whistle, echoing like an eldrich laugh among the cliffs of the upper gorge, announced the coming of a train from the direction of Carbonate. Adams looked at his watch.

“I'd like to know what that is,” he mused. “It's an hour too soon for the accommodation. By Jove!”

The exclamation directed itself at a one-car train which came thundering down the canyon to pull in on the siding beyond the Rosemary. The car was a passenger coach, well-lighted, and from his post on the embankment Adams could see armed men filling the windows. Michael Branagan saw them, too, and the fighting Celt in him rose to the occasion.

“'Tis Donnybrook Fair we've come to this time, Misther Adams. Shall I call up the b'ys wid their guns?”

“Not yet. Let's wait and see what happens.”

What happened was a peaceful sortie. Two men, each with a kit of some kind borne in a sack, dropped from the car, crossed the creek, and struggled up the hill through the unbridged gap. Adams waited until they were fairly on the right of way, then he called down to them.

“Halt, there! you two. This is corporation property.”

“Not much it ain't!” retorted one of the trespassers gruffly. “It's the drain-way from our placer up yonder.”

“What are you going to do up there at this time of night?”

“None o' your blame business!” was the explosive counter-shot.

“Perhaps it isn't,” said Adams mildly. “Just the same, I'm thirsting to know. Call it vulgar curiosity if you like.”

“All right, you can know, and be cussed to you. We're goin' to work our claim. Got anything to say against it?”

“Oh! no,” rejoined Adams; and when the twain had disappeared in the upper darkness he went down the grade with Branagan and took his place on the man-loaded flats for the run to the construction camp, thinking more of the lately-arrived car with its complement of armed men than of the two miners who had calmly announced their intention of working a placer claim on a high mountain, without water, and in the dead of winter! By which it will be seen that Mr. Morton P. Adams, C. E. M. I. T. Boston, had something yet to learn in the matter of practical field work.

By the time Ah Foo had served him his solitary supper in the dinkey he had quite forgotten the incident of the mysterious placer miners. Worse than this, it had never occurred to him to connect their movements with the Rajah's plan of campaign. On the other hand, he was thinking altogether of the carload of armed men, and trying to devise some means of finding out how they were to be employed in furthering the Rajah's designs.

The means suggested themselves after supper, and he went alone over to Argentine to spend a half-hour in the bar of the dance-hall listening to the gossip of the place. When he had learned what he wanted to know, he forthfared to meet Winton at the incoming train.

“We are in for it now,” he said, when they had crossed the creek to the dinkey and the Chinaman was bringing Winton's belated supper. “The Rajah has imported a carload of armed mercenaries, and he is going to clean us all out to-morrow: arrest everybody from the gang foremen up.”

Winton's eyebrows lifted. “So? that is a pretty large contract. Has he men enough to do it?”

“Not so many men. But they are sworn-in deputies, with the sheriff of Ute County in command—a posse, in fact. So he has the law on his side.”

“Which is more than he had when he set a thug on me this afternoon at Carbonate,” said Winton sourly; and he told Adams about the misunderstanding in the lobby of the Buckingham. His friend whistled under his breath. “By Jove! that's pretty rough. Do you suppose the Rajah dictated any such Lucretia Borgia thing as that?”

Winton took time to think about it and admitted a doubt, as he had not before. Believing Mr. Somerville Darrah fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils in his official capacity of vice-president of a fighting corporation, he was none the less disposed to find excuses for Miss Virginia Carteret's uncle.

“I did think so at first, but I guess it was only the misguided zeal of some understrapper. Of course, word has gone out all along the C. G. R. line that we are to be delayed by every possible expedient.”

But Adams shook his head.

“Mr. Darrah dictated that move in his own proper person.”

“How do you know that?”

“You had a message from me this afternoon?”

“I did.”

“What did you think of it?”

“I thought you might have left out the first part of it; also that you might have made the latter half a good bit more explicit.”

A slow smile spread itself over Adams' impassive face.

“Every man has his limitations,” he said. “I did the best I could. But the Rajah knew very well what he was about—otherwise there would have been no telegram.”

Winton sent the Chinaman out for another cup of tea before he said, “Did Miss Carteret come here alone?”

“Oh, no; Calvert came with her.”

“What brought them here?”

Adams spread his hands.

“What makes any woman do precisely the most unexpected thing?”

Winton was silent for a moment. Finally he said: “I hope you did what you could to make it pleasant for her.”

“I did. And I didn't hear her complain.”

“That was low-down in you, Morty.”

Adams chuckled reminiscently. “Had to do it to make my day-before-yesterday lie hold water. And she was immensely taken with the scrawls, especially with one of them.”

Winton flushed under the bronze.

“I suppose I don't need to ask which one.”

Adams' grin was a measure of his complacence.

“Well, hardly.”

“She took it away with her?”

“Took it, or tore it up, I forget which.”

“Tell me, Morty, was she very angry?”

The other took the last hint of laughter out of his eyes before he said solemnly: “You'll never know how thankful I was that you were twenty miles away.”

Winton's cup was full, and he turned the talk abruptly to the industrial doings and accomplishments of the day. Adams made a verbal report which led him by successive steps up to the twilight hour when he had stood with Branagan on the brink of the placer drain, but, strangely enough, there was no stirring of memory to recall the incident of the upward-climbing miners.

When Winton rose he said something about mounting a night guard on the engine, which was kept under steam at all hours; and shortly afterward he left the dinkey ostensibly to do it, declining Adams' offer of company. But once out-of-doors he climbed straight to the operator's tent on the snow-covered slope. Carter had turned in, but he sat up in his bunk at the noise of the intrusion.

“That you, Mr. Winton? Want to send something?” he asked.

“No, go to sleep. I'll write a wire and leave it for you to send in the morning.”

He sat down at the packing-case instrument table and wrote out a brief report of the day's progress in track-laying for the general manager's record. But when Carter's regular breathing told him he was alone he pushed the pad aside, took down the sending-hook, and searched until he had found the original copy of the message which had reached him at the moment of cataclysms in the lobby of the Buckingham.

“Um,” he said, and his heart grew warm within him. “It's just about as I expected: Morty didn't have anything whatever to do with it—except to sign and send it as she commanded him to.” And the penciled sheet was folded carefully and filed in permanence in the inner breast pocket of his brown duck shooting-coat.

The moon was rising behind the eastern mountain when he extinguished the candle and went out. Below lay the chaotic construction camp buried in silence and in darkness save for the lighted windows of the dinkey. He was not quite ready to go back to Adams, and after making a round of the camp and bidding the engine watchman keep a sharp lookout against a possible night surprise, he set out to walk over the newly-laid track of the day.

Another half-hour had elapsed, and a waning moon was clearing the topmost crags of Pacific Peak when he came out on the high embankment opposite the Rosemary, having traversed the entire length of the lateral loop and inspected the trestle at the gulch head by the light of a blazing spruce-branch.

The station with its two one-car trains, and the shacks of the little mining-camp beyond, lay shimmering ghost-like in the new-born light of the moon. The engine of the sheriff's car was humming softly with a note like the distant swarming of bees, and from the dancehall in Argentine the snort of a trombone and the tinkling clang of a cracked piano floated out upon the frosty night air.

Winton turned to go back. The windows of the Rosemary were all dark, and there was nothing to stay for. So he thought, at all events; but if he had not been musing abstractedly upon things widely separated from his present surroundings, he might have remarked two tiny stars of lantern-light high on the placer ground above the embankment; or, failing the sight, he might have heard the dull, measured slumph of a churn-drill burrowing deep in the frozen earth of the slope.

As it was, a pair of brown eyes blinded him, and the tones of a voice sweeter than the songs of Oberon's sea-maid filled his ears. Wherefore he neither saw nor heard; and taking the short cut across the mouth of the lateral gulch back to camp, he boarded the dinkey and went to bed without disturbing Adams.

The morning of the day to come broke clear and still, with the stars paling one by one at the pointing finger of the dawn, and the frost-rime lying thick and white like a snowfall of erect and glittering needles on iron and steel and wood.

Obedient to orders, the bridge-builders were getting out their hand-car at the construction camp, the wheels shrilling merrily on the frosted rails, and the men stamping and swinging their arms to start the sluggish night-blood. Suddenly, like the opening gun of a battle, the dull rumble of a mighty explosion trembled upon the still air, followed instantly by a sound as of a passing avalanche.

Winton was out and running up the track before the camp was fairly aroused. What he saw when he gained the hither side of the lateral gulch was a sight to make a strong man weep. A huge landslide, starting from the frozen placer ground high up on the western promontory, had swept every vestige of track and embankment into the deep bed of the creek at a point precisely opposite Mr. Somerville Darrah's private car.