For a time after the suicide of the off-trick-despatcher the wreck epidemic paused. Acting upon Mr. Norcross's suggestion, Mr. Van Britt called his trainmen in, a crew at a time, and gave them the straight tip; and after that the hoodoo died a natural death, and a good many pairs of eyes all along the Short Line were keeping a sharp lookout for the trouble-makers.

In the meantime, Tarbell, still digging faithfully, managed to turn up a few facts that were worth something. In the Petrolite case he found a lone prospector living in a shack high up on the farther side of the canyon who told him that late in the evening of the day preceding the wreck he had seen two men climbing the slope from which the boulder had been dislodged, and that one of them was carrying a pick. Also, further investigation seemed to prove that the rail which the blow of the rock was supposed to have knocked loose had been previously weakened, either by drawing some of the spikes, or by unscrewing the nuts on the bolts at the joints.

In another field, and this time under Ripley's instructions, our ex-cow-punch' had been able to set and bait a trap. By diligent search he had found the man Murphy, the Clanahan henchman, who, under pressure, had given away the Timber Mountain plot which had climaxed in the kidnapping of the boss. This man had been deliberately shot in a bar-room brawl and left for dead. But he had crawled away and had got out of town to live and recover at a distant cattle ranch in the Limberton Hills.

When Tarbell discovered him he had cut out the booze, had grown a beard, and was thirsting for vengeance. Tarbell brought him back to Portal City, and presently there began to be developments. Murphy knew all the ropes. In a little time, Ripley, with Tarbell's help, was loaded for bear. One chilly October afternoon the lawyer came down to our office to tell Mr. Norcross that the game was cornered.

"All you have to do now is to give the word," was the way Ripley wound up. "You refused to do it on a former occasion because we couldn't get the men higher up. This time we can nail Clanahan, and a good few of the political gangsters and bosses in the other towns along the line. What do you say?"

The boss looked up with the little horse-shoe frown wrinkling between his eyes.

"Can we get Hatch and Henckel?"

"No; not yet."

"Very well; then you may lock those papers up in your safe and we'll wait. When you can see your way clear to a criminal trial, with Rufus Hatch and Gustave Henckel in the prisoner's dock, we'll start the legal machinery: but not before."

By now we were right on the eve of the State election. As far as anybody could see, the railroad had stayed free and clear of the political fight. The boss had kept his promise to maintain neutrality and was still keeping it.

At the appointed time the big day dawned, and the political wind-up held the center of the stage. So far as we were concerned, it passed off very quietly. From the wire gossip that dribbled in during the day it appeared that the railroad vote was heavy, though there were neither charges nor counter-charges to indicate which way it had been thrown.

Along in the afternoon the newspaper offices began to put out bulletins, and by evening the result was no longer doubtful. For the first time in years the power of the political machine had been smashed decisively at the polls, and on the following morning the Mountaineer announced the election of Governor Burrell, with a safe working majority in both houses of the Legislature for the Independents.

Naturally, there was all sorts of a yell from the other side of the fence. Charges were freely made, now, that the railroad had deliberately ditched its friends, and all that. Also there were the bluest kind of predictions for the future, most of them winding up with the assertion that there could be no such thing as true prosperity for the country while the Short Line continued under its present management.

It was on the third day after the election, rather late in the afternoon, that the boss had a call from a mining promoter named Dawes, representing a bunch of mine owners at Strathcona who were having trouble with the smelter.

I was busy at the time and didn't pay much attention to what was said, but I got the drift of it. The smelter, one of the few Hatch monopolies which hadn't been shaken loose as yet, was located in the gulch six miles below Strathcona, and it was served exclusively by its own industrial railroad, which it was using as a lever to pry an excessive hauling charge out of the mine owners. Wouldn't Mr. Norcross try to do something about it?

The boss said he'd do anything he could, and asked what the mine owners wanted. Dawes said they wanted help; that they were going to hold a mass meeting in Strathcona the following morning at nine o'clock. Would it, or wouldn't it, be possible for Mr. Norcross to be present at that meeting?

Of course, the boss said he'd go. It meant the better part of a night's run, special, in the private car, but that didn't make any difference. Dawes went away, and before we broke off to go to dinner at the railroad club, I was given a memorandum order for the special.

At the club I found that Mr. Norcross had an invited guest—Major Kendrick. For a week or two Mrs. Sheila had been visiting at the State capital, and the major's wife and Maisie Ann were with her. So the good old major was sort of unattached, and glad enough, I took it, to be a guest at anybody's table.

For a while the table talk—in which, of course, Jimmie Dodds hadn't any part whatever—circled around the late landslide election, and what Governor Burrell's party would do, now that it had the say-so. But by and by it got around to the railroad situation.

"You're putting up a mighty good fight, Graham, my son, but it isn't over yet—not by a jugful, suh"—this isn't just the way the major said it, but it's as near as I can come to his soft Southern drawl with the smothered "r's." "I've known Misteh Rufus Hatch for a good many yeahs, and he has the perseve'ance of the ve'y devil. With all that has been done, you must neveh forget, for a single hou'uh, that youh admirable reform structchuh stands, as yet, upon the life of a single man. Don't lose sight of that, Graham."

The boss looked up kind of curiously.

"You and Sheila seem to think that that point needs emphasizing more than any other," he commented.

The major's fine old eyes twinkled gravely.

"You are mighty safe in payin' strict attention to whatever the little gyerl tells you, Graham, my boy," he asserted. "She has a way of gettin' at the heart of things that puts us meah men to shame—she has, for a fact, suh."

"She has been very helpful to me," the boss put in, with his eyes in his plate. "In fact, I may say that she has herself suggested a good many of the moves in the railroad game. It's marvelous, and I can't understand how she can do it."

They went on for a while, singing Mrs. Sheila's praises over in a good many different ways, and I thought, wherever she might happen to be just then, her pretty little ears ought to be burning good and hard. To hear them talk you would have thought she was another Portia-person, and then some.

The dinner wore itself out after a while, and when the waiter brought the cigars, the boss was looking at his watch.

"I'm sorry I can't stay and smoke with you, major," he said, pushing his chair back. "But the business grind never lets up. I'm obliged to go to Strathcona to-night."

I don't know what the major was going to say to this abrupt break-away: the after-dinner social cigar was a sort of religious ceremony with him. But whatever he was going to say, he didn't say it, for at that moment a telegraph boy came in and handed him a message. He put on his other glasses and read the telegram, with his big goatee looking more than ever like a dagger and the fierce white mustaches twitching. At the end of things he folded the message and put it into his pocket, saying, sort of soberly:

"Graham, there are times when Sheila's intuhferences are mighty neah uncanny; they are, for a fact, suh. This wire is from her. What do you suppose it says?"

Of course, the boss said he couldn't suppose anything about it, and the major went on.

"She tells me, in just seven words, not to let you go to Strathcona to-night. Now what do you make of that? How on top of God's green earth did she know, away off yondeh at the capital, that you were meaning to go to Strathcona to-night?"

Mr. Norcross shook his head. Then he said: "There are wires—both kinds—though I don't know why anybody should telegraph or telephone the capital that I expect to attend a mine-owners' meeting to-morrow morning in the big gold camp. That's why I'm going, you know."

"But this warning," the major insisted. "There's a reason for it, Graham, as sure as you are bawn!"

Again the boss shook his head.

"Between you two, you and Sheila, I'm due to acquire a case of nerves. I don't know what she has heard, but I can't afford to dodge a business appointment. I have wired the Strathcona people that I shall be there to-morrow morning, and it is too late to make other arrangements. Sheila has merely overheard an echo of the threats that are constantly being made by the Hatch sympathizers. It's the aftermath of the election, but it's all talk. They're down and out, and they haven't the nerve to strike back, now."

That ended matters at the club, and the boss and I walked down to the headquarters. The special, with Buck Chandler on the smart little eight-wheeler that we always had for the private-car trips, was waiting, and at the last minute I thought I wasn't going to get to go.

"There's no need of your putting in a night on the road, Jimmie," said the boss, with the kindly thought for other people's comfort that never failed him. But after I had begged a little, telling him that he'd need somebody to take notes in the mine meeting, he said, "All right," and we got aboard and gave the word to Maclise, the conductor, to get his clearance and go.

A few minutes later we pulled out and the night run was begun. Like every other car the boss had ever owned, the "05" was fitted up as a working office, and since he had me along, he opened up a lot of claim papers upon which the legal department was giving him the final say-so, and we went to work.

For the next two hours I was so busy that I didn't know when we passed the various stations. There were no passenger trains to meet, and the despatcher was apparently giving us "regardless" rights over everything else, since we made no stops. At half-past nine, Mr. Norcross snapped a rubber band over the last of the claim files, lighted a pipe, and told me I might go to bed if I wanted to; said that he was going himself after he'd had a smoke. Just then, Chandler whistled for a station, and, looking out of a window, I saw that we were pulling into Bauxite, the little wind-blown junction from which the Strathcona branch led away into the northern mountains.

Wanting a bite of fresh air before turning in, I got off when we made the stop and strolled up to the engine. Maclise was in the office, getting orders for the branch, and Chandler was squatting in the gangway of the 815 and waiting. Up ahead of us, and too far away for me to read the number on her tender, there was a light engine. I thought at first it was the pusher which was kept at Bauxite to help heavy freights up the branch grades, and I wondered what it was doing out on the branch "Y" and in our way.

"What's the pusher out for, Buck?" I asked.

Chandler grinned down at me.

"You ain't so much of a railroad man as you might be, Jimmie," he said. "That ain't the pusher."

"What is it, then?"

"It's our first section, runnin' light to Strathcona."

Maybe Chandler was right, that I wasn't much of a railroad man, but I savvied the Short Line operating rules well enough to know that it wasn't usual to run a light engine, deadheading over the road, as a section of a special. Also, I knew that Buck knew it.

With that last little talk over the club dinner-table fresh in mind, I began to wonder, but instead of asking Chandler any more questions about the engine out ahead, I asked him if I might ride a piece with him up the branch; and when he said "Sure," I climbed up and humped myself on the fireman's box.

Maclise got his orders in due time and we pulled out. I noticed that when he gave Chandler the word, he also made motions with his lantern to the engine up ahead and it promptly steamed away, speeding up until it had about a half-mile lead and then holding it. That seemed funny, too. Though it is a rule that is often broken on all railroads, the different sections of a train are supposed to keep at least five minutes apart, and our "first" wasn't much more than a minute away from us at any time.

Another thing that struck me as being funny was the way Chandler was running. It was only sixty mountain miles up the branch to the big gold camp, and we ought to have been able to make it by one o'clock, taking it dead easy. But the way Buck was niggling along it looked as if it might be going to take us all night.

Just the same, nothing happened. The first ten miles was across a desert stretch with only a slightly rising grade, and it was pretty much all tangent—straight line. Beyond the ten-mile station of Nippo we hit the mountain proper, climbing it through a dry canyon, with curves that blocked off everything fifty feet ahead of the engine, and grades that would have made pretty good toboggan slides. The night was fine and starlit, but there was no moon and the canyon shadows loomed like huge walls to shut us in.

On the reverse curves I could occasionally get a glimpse of the red tail lights of the engine which ought, by rights, to have been five full minutes ahead of us. It was still holding its short lead, jogging along as leisurely as we were.

With nothing to do and not much to see, I got sleepy after a while, and about the time when I was thinking that I might as well climb back over the tender and turn in, I dozed off right there on the fireman's box—which was safe enough, at the snail's pace we were running. When I awoke it was with the feeling that I hadn't been asleep more than a minute or two, but the facts were against me. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning, and we had worried through the thirty-five miles of canyon run and were climbing the steep talus of Slide Mountain.

At first I didn't know what it was that woke me. On my side of the engine the big mountain fell away, miles it seemed, on a slope on which a man could hardly have kept his footing, and where a train, jumping the track, would roll forever before it would stop in the gorges at the bottom. While I was rubbing my eyes, the eight-wheeler gave another little jerk, and I saw that Chandler was slowing for a stop; saw this and got a glimpse of somebody on the track ahead, flagging us down with a lantern.

A minute later the brakes had been set and Buck and I were off. As we swung down from the engine step, Maclise joined us, and we went to meet the man with the lantern. He was the fireman of the engine ahead, and when we got around on the track I saw that our "first section" was stopped just a little way farther on.

"What is it, Barty?" said Maclise, when we came up to the fireman.

"It's them hell-fired wreckers again," was the gritting reply. "Rail joint disconnected and sprung out so's to let us off down the mountain."

I thought it was up to me to go back and tell the boss, but there wasn't any need of it. The stop or the slow running or something had roused him, and he was up and dressed and coming along beside the engine. When he came up, Maclise told him why we were stopping. He didn't say anything about the rail break, but he did ask, sort of sharp and quick, what engine that was up ahead.

I don't know what Maclise told him. Chandler turned to go back to his engine, and the rest of us were moving along the other way, the boss setting the pace with Maclise at his elbow. Three rail-lengths ahead of the stopped light engine we came to the break. The head engineer and another man were down on their hands and knees examining it, and when they stood up at our coming, I saw that the other man was Mr. Van Britt.

"What?" said the boss; "you here?"

Our only millionaire nodded.

"I ride the line once in a while—just to see how things are going," he returned crisply.

The boss didn't say anything more, but he knelt to look at the break. It was a trap, all right, set, beyond all question of doubt, to catch the private-car special. The fish-plates had been removed from a joint in the left-hand rail and the end of the downhill rail had been sprung out to make a derailing switch, which was held in position by the insertion of one of the fish-plates between the rail-webs. If we had hit the trap, going at even ordinary mountain-climbing speed, there would have been nothing left to tell the tale but a heap of scrap at the bottom of the thousand-foot dump.

There wasn't very much talk made by anybody. Under Mr. Van Britt's directions the engineer and fireman of the pilot engine brought tools and the break was repaired. All they had to do was to spring the bent rail back into place and spike it, and bolt the fish-plates on again.

While they were doing it the boss stood aside with Mr. Van Britt, and I heard what was said. Mr. Van Britt began it by saying, "We don't need any detectives this time. You are on your way to Strathcona to put a crimp in the smelter squeeze—the last of the Red Tower monopolies—so Dawes told me. He was probably foolish enough to tell others, and the word was pasted to scrag you before you could get to it. This trap was set to catch your special."

"Evidently," barked the boss; and then: "How did you happen to be here on that engine, Upton?"

"I've been ahead of you all the way up from Portal City," was the calm reply. "I thought it might be safer if you had a pilot to show you the way. I guess I must have had a hunch."

The boss turned on him like a flash.

"You had something more than a hunch: what was it—a wire?"

Mr. Van Britt gritted his teeth a little, but he told the truth.

"Yes; a friend of ours tipped me off—not about the broken track, of course, but just in a general way. I knew you'd bully me if I should tell you that I was going to run a pilot ahead of you, so I didn't tell you."

The break was repaired and the men were taking the tools back to the engine. As we turned to follow them, Mr. Norcross said: "Just one more question, Upton. Did your wire come from the capital?"

But at this Mr. Van Britt seemed to forget that he was talking to his general manager.

"It's none of your damned business where it came from," he snapped back; and that ended it.