Unobserved the two friends watched the poker game, which for a time proceeded quietly. But suddenly they saw Appleton lean over the table and address the man with the derby hat; then, thrusting back his chair, he rose, declaring, in a louder tone:
"I tell you I saw it. I thought I was mistaken at first." His face was white, and he disregarded the efforts of his right-hand neighbor to quiet him.
"Don't squeal," smiled the dealer. "I'll leave it to the boys if I did anything wrong."
"You pulled that king from the bottom. It may not be wrong, but it's damned peculiar."
"Forget it!" one of the others exclaimed. "Denny wouldn't double-cross you."
"Hardly!" agreed Mr. Denny, evenly. "You're 'in' a hundred and eighty dollars, but if you're sore you can have it back."
Appleton flung his cards into the middle of the table and turned away disgustedly. "It's a hard thing to prove, and I'm not absolutely sure I saw straight, or—I'd take it back, fast enough."
Denny shrugged and gathered in the discarded hand. "You've been drinking too much, that's all. Your eyesight is scattered."
Appleton's face flushed as he beheld the gaze of the company upon him and heard the laughter which greeted this remark. He turned to leave when O'Neil, who had continued to watch the proceedings with interest, crossed to the group and touched Denny on the shoulder, saying, quietly:
"Give him his money."
"Eh?" The smile faded from the fellow's face; he looked up with startled inquiry. "What?"
"Give him his money."
In the momentary hush which followed, "Happy Tom" Slater, who had frequently seen his employer in action and understood storm signals, sighed deeply and reached for the nearest chair. With a wrench of his powerful hands he loosened a leg. Although Mr. Slater abhorred trouble, he was accustomed to meet it philosophically. A lifetime spent in construction camps had taught him that, of all weapons, the one best suited to his use was a pick-handle; second to that he had come to value the hardwood leg of a chair. But in the present case his precaution proved needless, for the dispute was over before he had fairly prepared himself.
Without waiting for O'Neil to put his accusation into words Denny had risen swiftly, and in doing so he had either purposely or by accident made a movement which produced a prompt and instinctive reaction. Murray's fist met him as he rose, met him so squarely and with such force that he lost all interest in what followed. The other card-players silently gathered Mr. Denny in their arms and stretched him upon a disused roulette table; the bartender appeared with a wet towel and began to bathe his temples.
Appleton, dazed by the suddenness of it all, found a stack of gold pieces in his hand and heard O'Neil saying in an every-day tone:
"Come to my room, please. I'd like to talk to you." Something commanding in the speaker's face made the engineer follow against his will. He longed to loiter here until Denny had regained his senses—but O'Neil had him by the arm and a moment later he was being led down the hall away from the lobby and the barroom. As Slater, who had followed, closed the door behind them, Dan burst forth:
"By Jove! Why didn't you tell me? I knew he was crooked—but I couldn't believe—"
"Sit down!" said O'Neil. "He won't pull himself together for a while, and I want to get to bed. Are you looking for a job?"
The engineer's eyes opened wide.
"Yes."
"Do you know the Kyak country?"
"Pretty well."
"I need a surveyor. Your wages will be the same that Gordon paid and they begin now, if it's agreeable."
"It certainly is!"
"Good! We'll leave at six o'clock, sharp. Bring your bedding and instruments."
"Thanks! I—This is a bit of a surprise. Who are you?"
"I'm O'Neil."
"Oh!" Mr. Appleton's expression changed quickly. "You're Murray—" He stammered an instant. "It was very good of you to take my part, after I'd been fool enough to—"
"Well—I didn't want to see you make a total idiot of yourself."
The young man flushed slightly, then in a quieter voice, he asked:
"How did you know I was out of work?"
"Mr. Gordon told me. He recommended you highly."
"He did?"
"He said you were unreliable, disloyal, and dishonest. Coming from him I took that as high praise."
There was a moment's pause, then Appleton laughed boyishly.
"That's funny! I'm very glad to know you, Mr. O'Neil."
"You don't, and you won't for a long time. Tom tells me you didn't think well of Gordon's enterprise and so he fired you."
"That's right! I suppose I ought to have kept my mouth shut, but it has a way of flying open when it shouldn't. He is either a fool or a crook, and his mine is nothing but a prospect. I couldn't resist telling him so."
"And his railroad?"
Appleton hesitated. "Oh, it's as good a route as the Trust's. I worked on the two surveys. Personally I think both outfits are crazy to try to build in from here. I had to tell Gordon that, too. You see I'm a volunteer talker. I should have been born with a stutter—it would have saved me a lot of trouble."
O'Neil smiled. "You may talk all you please in my employ, so long as you do your work. Now get some sleep, for we have a hard trip. And by the way"—the youth paused with a hand on the doorknob—"don't go looking for Denny."
Appleton's face hardened stubbornly.
"I can't promise that, sir."
"Oh yes you can! You must! Remember, you're working for me, and you're under orders. I can't have the expedition held up on your account."
The engineer's voice was heavy with disappointment, but a vague admiration was growing in his eyes as he agreed:
"Very well, sir. I suppose my time is yours. Good night."
When he had gone "Happy Tom" inquired:
"Now, why in blazes did you hire him? We don't need a high-priced surveyor on this job."
"Of course not, but don't you see? He'd have been arrested, sure. Besides—he's Irish, and I like him."
"Humph! Then I s'pose he's got a job for life," said Tom, morosely. "You make friends and enemies quicker than anybody I ever saw. You've got Curtis Gordon on your neck now."
"On account of this boy? Nonsense!"
"Not altogether. Denny is Gordon's right bower. I think he calls him his secretary; anyhow, he does Gordon's dirty work and they're thicker than fleas. First you come along and steal me, underhanded, then you grab his pet engineer before he has a chance to hire him back again. Just to top off the evening you publicly brand his confidential understrapper as a card cheat and thump him on the medulla oblongata—"
"Are you sure it wasn't the duodenum?"
"Well, you hit him in a vital spot, and Gordon won't forget it."
Late on the following morning O'Neil's expedition was landed at the deserted fishing-station of Omar, thirty miles down the sound from Cortez. From this point its route lay down the bay to open water and thence eastward along the coast in front of the Salmon River delta some forty miles to Kyak. This latter stretch would have been well-nigh impossible for open boats but for the fact that the numerous mud bars and islands thrown out by the river afforded a sheltered course. These inside channels, though shallow, were of sufficient depth to allow small craft to navigate and had long been used as a route to the coal-fields.
Appleton, smiling and cheerful, was the first member of the party to appear at the dock that morning, and when the landing had been effected at Omar he showed his knowledge of the country by suggesting a short cut which would save the long row down to the mouth of the sound and around into the delta. Immediately back of the old cannery, which occupied a gap in the mountain rim, lay a narrow lake, and this, he declared, held an outlet which led into the Salmon River flats. By hauling the boats over into this body of water—a task made easy by the presence of a tiny tramway with one dilapidated push-car which had been a part of the cannery equipment—it would be possible to save much time and labor.
"I've heard there was a way through," O'Neil confessed, "but nobody seemed to know just where it was."
"I know," the young man assured him. "We can gain a day at least, and I judge every day is valuable."
"So valuable that we can't afford to lose one by making a mistake," said his employer, meaningly.
"Leave it to me. I never forget a country once I've been through it."
Accordingly the boats were loaded upon the hand-car and transferred one at a time. In the interval O'Neil examined his surroundings casually. He was surprised to find the dock and buildings in excellent condition, notwithstanding the fact that the station had lain idle for several years. A solitary Norwegian, with but a slight suspicion of English, was watching the premises and managed to make known his impression that poor fishing had led the owners to abandon operations at this point. He, too, had heard that Omar Lake had an outlet into the delta, but he was not sure of its existence; he was sure of nothing, in fact except that it was very lonesome here, and that he had run out of tobacco five days before.
But Dan Appleton was not mistaken. A two hours' row across the mirror-like surface of Omar Lake brought the party out through a hidden gap in the mountains and afforded them a view across the level delta. To their left the range they had just penetrated retreated toward the canon where the Salmon River burst its way out from the interior, and beyond that point it continued in a coastward swing to Kyak, their destination. Between lay a flat, trackless tundra, cut by sloughs and glacial streams, with here and there long tongues of timber reaching down from the high ground and dwindling away toward the seaward marshes. It was a desolate region, the breeding-place of sea fowl, the hunting-ground for the great brown bear.
O'Neil had never before been so near the canon as this, and the wild stories he had heard of it recurred to him with interest. He surveyed the place curiously as the boats glided along, but could see nothing more than a jumble of small hills and buttes, and beyond them the dead-gray backs of the twin glaciers coming down from the slopes to east and west. Beyond the foot-hills and the glaciers themselves the main range was gashed by a deep valley, through which he judged the river must come, and beyond that he knew was a country of agricultural promise, extending clear to the fabulous copper belt whither the railroads from Cortez were headed. Still farther inland lay the Tanana, and then the Yukon, with their riches untouched.
What a pity, what a mockery, it was that this obvious entrance to the country had been blocked by nature! Just at his back was Omar, with its deep and sheltered harbor; the lake he had crossed gave a passage through the guardian range, and this tundra—O'Neil estimated that he could lay a mile of track a day over it—led right up to the glaciers. Once through the Coast Range, building would be easy, for the upper Salmon was navigable, and its banks presented no difficulties to track-laying.
He turned abruptly to Appleton, who was pulling an oar.
"What do you know about that canyon?" he asked.
"Not much. Nobody knows much, for those fellows who went through in the gold rush have all left the country. Gordon's right-of-way comes in above, and so does the Trust's. From there on I know every foot of the ground."
"I suppose if either of them gets through to the Salmon the rest will be easy."
"Dead easy!"
"It would be shorter and very much cheaper to build from Omar, through this way."
"Of course, but neither outfit knew anything about the outlet to Omar Lake until I told them—and they knew there was the canon to be reckoned with."
"Well?"
Appleton shook his head. "Look at it! Does it look like a place to build a railroad?"
"I can't tell anything about it, from here."
"I suppose a road could be built if the glaciers were on the same side of the river, but—they're not. They face each other, and they're alive, too. Listen!" The oarsmen ceased rowing at Dan's signal, and out of the northward silence came a low rumble like the sound of distant cannonading. "We must be at least twenty miles away, in an air line. The ice stands up alongside the river, hundreds of feet high, and it breaks off in chunks as big as a New York office-building."
"You've been up there?"
"No. But everybody says so, and I've seen glacier ice clear out here in the delta. They're always moving, too—the glaciers themselves—and they're filled with crevasses, so that it's dangerous to cross them on foot even if one keeps back from the river."
"How did those men get their outfits through in '98?" O'Neil queried.
"I'm blessed if I know—maybe they flew." After a moment Dan added, "Perhaps they dodged the pieces as they fell."
O'Neil smiled. He opened his lips to speak, then closed them, and for a long time kept his eyes fixed speculatively in the direction of the canyon. When he had first spoken of a route from Omar he had thrown out the suggestion with only a casual interest. Now, suddenly, the idea took strong possession of his mind; it fascinated him with its daring, its bigness. He had begun to dream.
The world owes all great achievements to dreamers, for men who lack vivid imaginations are incapable of conceiving big enterprises. No matter how practical the thing accomplished, it requires this faculty, no less than a poem or a picture. Every bridge, every skyscraper, every mechanical invention, every great work which man has wrought in steel and stone and concrete, was once a dream.
O'Neil had no small measure of the imaginative power that makes great leaders, great inventors, great builders. He was capable of tremendous enthusiasm; his temperament forever led him to dare what others feared to undertake. And here he glimpsed a tremendous opportunity. The traffic of a budding nation was waiting to be seized. To him who gained control of Alaskan transportation would come the domination of her resources. Many were striving for the prize, but if there should prove to be a means of threading that Salmon River canon with steel rails, the man who first found it would have those other railroad enterprises at his mercy. The Trust would have to sue for terms or abandon further effort; for this route was shorter, it was level, it was infinitely cheaper to improve. The stakes in the game were staggering. The mere thought of them made his heart leap. The only obstacle, of course, lay in those glaciers, and he began to wonder if they could not be made to open. Why not? No one knew positively that they were impregnable, for no one knew anything certainly about them. Until the contrary had been proven there was at least a possibility that they were less formidable than rumor had painted them.
Camp was pitched late that night far out on the flats. During the preparation of supper Murray sat staring fixedly before him, deaf to all sounds and insensible to the activities of his companions. He had lost his customary breeziness and his good nature; he was curt, saturnine, unsmiling. Appleton undertook to arouse him from this abstraction, but Slater drew the young man aside hurriedly with a warning,
"Don't do that, son, or you'll wear splints for the rest of the trip."
"What's the matter with him, anyhow?" Dan inquired. "He was boiling over with enthusiasm all day, but now—Why, he's asleep sitting up! He hasn't moved for twenty minutes."
Tom shook his head, dislodging a swarm of mosquitoes.
"Walk on your toes, my boy! Walk on your toes! I smell something cooking—and it ain't supper."
When food was served O'Neil made a pretense of eating, but rose suddenly in the midst of it, with the words:
"I'll stretch my legs a bit." His voice was strangely listless; in his eyes was the same abstraction which had troubled Appleton during the afternoon. He left the camp and disappeared up the bank of the stream.
"Nice place to take a walk!" the engineer observed. "He'll bog down in half a mile or get lost among the sloughs."
"Not him!" said Slater. Nevertheless, his worried eyes followed the figure of his chief as long as it was in sight. After a time he announced: "Something is coming, but what it is or where it's going to hit us I don't know."
Their meal over, the boatmen made down their beds, rolled up in their blankets, and were soon asleep. Appleton and Tom sat in the smoke of a smudge, gossiping idly as the twilight approached. From the south came the distant voice of the sea, out of the north rolled the intermittent thunder of those falling bergs, from every side sounded a harsh chorus of water-fowl. Ducks whirred past in bullet-like flight, honkers flapped heavily overhead, a pair of magnificent snow-white swans soared within easy gunshot of the camp. An hour passed, another, and another; the arctic night descended. And through it all the mosquitoes sang their blood song and stabbed the watchers with tongues of flame.
"Happy Tom" sang his song, too, for it was not often that he obtained a listener, and it proved to be a song of infinite hard luck. Mr. Slater, it seemed, was a creature of many ills, the wretched abiding-place of aches and pains, of colics, cramps, and rheumatism. He was the target of misfortune and the sport of fate. His body was the galloping-ground of strange disorders which baffled diagnosis; his financial affairs were dominated by an evil genius which betrayed him at every turn. To top it all, he suffered at the moment a violent attack of indigestion.
"Ain't that just my luck?" he lamented. "Old 'Indy's got me good, and there ain't a bit of soda in the outfit."
Appleton, who was growing more and more uneasy at the absence of his leader, replied with some asperity:
"Instead of dramatizing your own discomforts you'd better be thinking of the boss. I'm going out to look for him."
"Now don't be a dam' fool," Slater advised. "It would be worth a broken leg to annoy him when he's in one of these fits. You'd make yourself as popular as a smallpox patient at a picnic. When he's dreamed his dream he'll be back."
"When will that be?"
"No telling—maybe to-night, maybe to-morrow night."
"And what are we going to do in the mean time?"
"Sit tight." Mr. Slater chewed steadily and sighed. "No soda in camp, and this gum don't seem to lay hold of me! That's luck!"
Darkness had settled when O'Neil reappeared. He came plunging out of the brush, drenched, muddy, stained by contact with the thickets; but his former mood had disappeared and in its place was a harsh, explosive energy.
"Tom!" he cried. "You and Appleton and I will leave at daylight. The men will wait here until we get back." His voice was incisive, its tone forbade question.
The youthful engineer stared at him in dismay, for only his anxiety had triumphed over his fatigue, and daylight was but four hours away. O'Neil noted the expression, and said, more gently:
"You're tired, Appleton, I know, but in working for me you'll be called upon for extraordinary effort now and then. I may not demand more than an extra hour from you; then again I may demand a week straight without sleep. I'll never ask it unless it's necessary and unless I'm ready to do my share."
"Yes, sir."
"The sacrifice is big, but the pay is bigger. Loyalty is all I require."
"I'm ready now, sir."
"We can't see to travel before dawn. Help Tom load the lightest boat with rations for five days. If we run short we'll 'Siwash' it." He kicked off his rubber boots, up-ended them to drain the water out, then flung himself upon his bed of boughs and was asleep almost before the two had recovered from their surprise.
"Five days—or longer!" Slater said, gloomily, as he and Dan began their preparations. "And me with indigestion!"
"What does it mean?" queried Appleton.
"It means I'll probably succumb."
"No, no! What's the meaning of this change of plan? I can't understand it."
"You don't need to," "Happy Tom" informed him, curtly. There was a look of solicitude in his face as he added, "I wish I'd made him take off his wet clothes before he went to sleep."
"Let's wake him up."
But Slater shook his head. "I'd sooner wake a rattlesnake," said he.
O'Neil roused the members of his expedition while the sky was reddening faintly, for he had a mind which worked like an alarm-clock. All except Appleton had worked for him before, and the men accepted his orders to await his return with no appearance of surprise.
With the first clear light he and his two companions set out, rowing up the estuary of the Salmon until the current became too swift to stem in that manner. Then landing, they rigged a "bridle" for the skiff, fitted their shoulders to loops in a ninety-foot tow rope, and began to "track" their craft up against the stream. It was heartbreaking work. Frequently they were waist-deep in the cold water. Long "sweepers" with tips awash in the flood interfered with their efforts. The many branches of the stream forced them to make repeated crossings, for the delta was no more than an endless series of islands through which the current swirled. When dusk overtook them they were wet, weary, and weak from hunger. With the dawn they were up and at it again, but their task became constantly more difficult because of the floating glacier ice, which increased with every mile. They were obliged to exercise the extremest caution. Hour after hour they strained against the current, until the ropes bit into their aching flesh, bringing raw places out on neck and palm. Hour after hour the ice, went churning past, and through it all came the intermittent echo of the caving glaciers ahead of them.
Dan Appleton realized very soon whither the journey was leading, and at thought of actually facing those terrors which loomed so large in conjecture his pulses began to leap. He had a suspicion of O'Neil's intent, but dared not voice it. Though the scheme seemed mad enough, its very audacity fascinated him. It would be worth while to take part in such an undertaking, even if it ended in failure. And somehow, against his judgment, he felt that his leader would find a way.
For the most part, O'Neil was as silent as a man of stone, and only on those rare occasions when he craved relief from his thoughts did he encourage Dan to talk. Then he sometimes listened, but more frequently he did not. Slater had long since become a dumb draught animal, senseless to discomfort except in the hour of relaxation when he monotonously catalogued his ills.
"Are you a married man?" O'Neil inquired once of Dan.
"Not yet, sir."
"Family?"
"Sure! A great big, fine one, consisting of a sister. But she's more than a family—she's a religion." Receiving encouragement from his employer's look of interest, he continued: "We were wiped out by the San Francisco earthquake, and stood in the bread line for a while. We managed to save four thousand dollars from the wreck, which we divided equally. Then we started out to make our fortunes. It was her idea."
"You came to Cortez?"
"Yes. Money was so easy for me that I lost all respect for it. The town rang with my mirth for a while. I was an awful fool."
"Education!"
"Now it's my ambition to get settled and have her with me. I haven't had a good laugh, a hearty meal, or a Christian impulse since I left her."
"What did she do with her half of the fortune?"
"Invested it wisely and went to work. I bought little round celluloid disks with mine; she bought land of some sort with hers. She's a newspaper woman, and the best in the world—or at least the best in Seattle. She wrote that big snow-slide story for The Review last fall. She tells 'em how to raise eight babies on seven dollars a week, or how to make a full set of library furniture out of three beer kegs, a packing-case, and an epileptic icebox. She runs the 'Domestic Economy' column; and she's the sweetest, the cleverest, the most stunning—"
Appleton's enthusiastic tribute ceased suddenly, for he saw that O'Neil was once more deaf and that his eyes were fixed dreamily upon the canon far ahead.
As the current quickened the progress of the little party became slower and more exhausting. Their destination seemed to retreat before them; the river wound back and forth in a maddening series of detours. Some of the float ice was large now, and these pieces rushed down upon them like charging horses, keeping them constantly on the alert to prevent disaster. It seemed impossible that such a flat country could afford so much fall. "Happy Tom" at length suggested that they tie up and pack the remaining miles overland, but O'Neil would not hear to this.
They had slept so little, their labors had been so heavy, that they were dumb and dull with fatigue when they finally reached the first bluffs and worked their boat through a low gorge where all the waters of the Salmon thrashed and icebergs galloped past like a pallid host in flight. Here they paused and stared with wondering eyes at what lay before; a chill, damp breath swept over them, and a mighty awe laid hold of their hearts.
"Come on!" said O'Neil. "Other men have gone through; we'll do the same."
On the evening of the sixth day a splintered, battered poling-boat with its seams open swung in to the bank where O'Neil's men were encamped, and its three occupants staggered out. They were gaunt and stiff and heavy-eyed. Even Tom Slater's full cheeks hung loose and flabby. But the leader was alert and buoyant; his face was calm, his eyes were smiling humorously.
"You'll take the men on to the coal-fields and finish the work," he told his boss packer later that night. "Appleton and I will start back to Cortez in the morning. When you have finished go to Juneau and see to the recording."
"Ain't that my luck?" murmured the dyspeptic. "Me for Kyak where there ain't a store, and my gum all wet."
"Chew it, paper and all," advised Appleton, cheerfully.
"Oh, the good has all gone out of it now," Slater explained.
"Meet me in Seattle on the fifteenth of next month," his employer directed.
"I'll be there if old 'Indy' spares me. But dyspepsia, with nothing to eat except beans and pork bosom, will probably lay me in my grave long before the fifteenth. However, I'll do my best. Now, do you want to know what I think of this proposition of yours?" He eyed his superior somberly.
"Sure; I want all the encouragement I can get, and your views are always inspiriting."
"Well, I think it's nothing more nor less than hydrophobia. These mosquitoes have given you the rabies and you need medical attention. You need it bad."
"Still, you'll help me, won't you?"
"Oh yes," said Tom, "I'll help you. But it's a pity to see a man go mad."
The clerk of the leading hotel in Seattle whirled his register about as a man deposited a weather-beaten war-bag on the marble floor and leaned over the counter to inquire:
"Is Murray O'Neil here?"
This question had been asked repeatedly within the last two hours, but heretofore by people totally different in appearance from the one who spoke now. The man behind the desk measured the stranger with a suspicious eye before answering. He saw a ragged, loose-hung, fat person of melancholy countenance, who was booted to the knee and chewing gum.
"Mr. O'Neil keeps a room here by the year," he replied, guardedly.
"Show me up!" said the new-comer as if advancing a challenge.
A smart reply was on the lips of the clerk, but something in the other's manner discouraged flippancy.
"You are a friend of Mr. O'Neil's?" he asked, politely.
"Friend? Um-m, no! I'm just him when he ain't around." In a loud tone he inquired of the girl at the news-stand, "Have you got any wintergreen gum?"
"Mr. O'Neil is not here."
The fat man stared at his informant accusingly, "Ain't this the fifteenth?" he asked.
"It is."
"Then he's here, all right!"
"Mr. O'Neil is not in," the clerk repeated, gazing fixedly over Mr. Slater's left shoulder.
"Well, I guess his room will do for me. I ain't particular."
"His room is occupied at present. If you care to wait you will find—"
Precisely what it was that he was to find Tom never learned, for at that moment the breath was driven out of his lungs by a tremendous whack, and he turned to behold Dr. Stanley Gray towering over him, an expansive smile upon his face.
"Look out!" Slater coughed, and seized his Adam's apple. "You made me swallow my cud." The two shook hands warmly.
"We've been expecting you, Tom," said the Doctor. "We're all here except Parker, and he wired he'd arrive to-morrow."
"Where's Murray?"
"He's around somewhere."
Slater turned a resentful, smoldering gaze upon the hotel clerk, and looked about him for a chair with a detachable leg, but the object of his regard disappeared abruptly behind the key-rack.
"This rat-brained party said he hadn't come."
"He arrived this morning, but we've barely seen him."
"I left Appleton in Juneau. He'll be down on the next boat."
"Appleton? Who's he?" Dr. Gray inquired.
"Oh, he's a new member of the order—initiated last month. He's learning to be a sleep-hater, like the rest of us. He's recording the right-of-way."
"What's in the air? None of us know. We didn't even know Murray's whereabouts—thought he was in Kyak, until he sounded the tocsin from New York. The other boys have quit their jobs and I've sold my practice."
"It's a railroad!"
Dr. Gray grinned. "Well! That's the tone I use when I break the news that it's a girl instead of a boy."
"It's a railroad," Slater repeated, "up the Salmon River!"
"Good Lord! What about those glaciers?"
"Oh, it ain't so much the glaciers and the floating icebergs and the raging chasms and the quaking tundra—Murray thinks he can overcome them—it's the mosquitoes and the Copper Trust that are going to figure in this enterprise. One of 'em will be the death of me, and the other will bust Murray, if he don't look out. Say, my neck is covered with bumps till it feels like a dog-collar of seed pearls."
"Do you think we'll have a fight?" asked the doctor, hopefully.
"A fight! It'll be the worst massacre since the Little Big Horn. We're surrounded already, and no help in sight."
O'Neil found his "boys" awaiting him when he returned to his room. There was Mellen, lean, gaunt and serious-minded, with the dust of Chihuahua still upon his shoes; there were McKay, the superintendent, who had arrived from California that morning; Sheldon, the commissary man; Elkins; "Doc" Gray; and "Happy Tom" Slater. Parker, the chief engineer, alone was absent.
"I sent Appleton in from Cortez," he told them, "to come down the river and make the preliminary survey into Omar. He cables me that he has filed his locations and everything is O. K. On my way East I stopped here long enough to buy the Omar cannery, docks, buildings, and town site. It's all mine, and it will save us ninety days' work in getting started."
"What do you make of that tundra between Omar and the canon?" queried McKay, who had crossed the Salmon River delta and knew its character. "It's like calf's-foot jelly—a man bogs down to his waist in it."
"We'll fill and trestle," said O'Neil.
"We couldn't move a pile-driver twenty feet."
"It's frozen solid in winter."
McKay nodded. "We'll have to drive steam points ahead of every pile, I suppose, and we'll need Eskimos to work in that cold, but I guess we can manage somehow."
"That country is like an apple pie," said Tom Slater—"it's better cold than hot. There's a hundred inches of rainfall at Omar in summer. We'll all have web feet when we get out."
Sheldon, the light-hearted commissary man, spoke up. "If it's as wet as all that, well need Finns—instead of Eskimos." He was promptly hooted into silence.
"I understand those glaciers come down to the edge of the river," the superintendent ventured.
"They do!" O'Neil acknowledged, "and they're the liveliest ones I ever saw. Tom can answer for that. One of them is fully four hundred feet high at the face and four miles across. They're constantly breaking, too."
"Lumps bigger than this hotel," supplemented Slater. "It's quite a sight—equal to anything in the state of Maine."
O'Neil laughed with the others at this display of sectional pride, and then explained: "The problem of passing them sounds difficult, but in reality it isn't. If those other engineers had looked over the ground as I did, instead of relying entirely upon hearsay, we wouldn't be meeting here to-day. Of course I realized that we couldn't build a road over a moving river of ice, nor in front of one, for that matter, but I discovered that Nature had made us one concession. She placed her glaciers on opposite sides of the valley, to be sure, but she placed the one that comes in from the east bank slightly higher upstream than the one that comes in from the west. They don't really face each other, although from the sea they appear to do so. You see the answer?" His hearers nodded vigorously. "If we cross the river, low down, by a trestle, and run up the east bank past Jackson glacier until we are stopped by Garfield—the upper one—then throw a bridge directly across, and back to the side we started from, we miss them both and have the river always between them and us. Above the upper crossing there will be a lot of heavy rock work to do, but nothing unusual, and, once through the gorge, we come out into the valley, where the other roads run in from Cortez. They cross three divides, while we run through on a one-per-cent grade. That will give us a downhill pull on all heavy freight."
"Sounds as simple as a pair of suspenders, doesn't it?" inquired Slater. "But wait till you see it. The gorge below Niagara is stagnant water compared with the cataract above those glaciers. It takes two looks to see the top of the mountains. And those glaciers themselves—Well! Language just gums up and sticks when it comes to describing them."
Mellen, the bridge-builder, spoke for the first time, and the others listened.
"As I understand it we will cross the river between the glaciers and immediately below the upper one."
"Exactly!"
He shook his head. "We can't build piers to withstand those heavy bergs which you tell me are always breaking off."
"I'll explain how we can," said O'Neil. "You've hit the bull's-eye—the tender spot in the whole enterprise. While the river is narrow and rapid in front of Jackson—the lower glacier—opposite Garfield there is a kind of lake, formed, I suppose, when the glacier receded from its original position. Now then, here lies the joker, the secret of the whole proposition. This lake is deep, but there is a shallow bar across its outlet which serves to hold back all but the small bergs. This gives us a chance to cross in safety. At first I was puzzled to discover why only the ice from the lower glacier came down-river; then, when I realized the truth, I knew I had the key to Alaska in my hands. We'll cross just below this bar. Understand? Of course it all depends upon Parker's verdict, but I'm so sure his will agree with mine that I've made my preparations, bought Omar and gathered you fellows together. We're going to spring the biggest coup in railroad history."
"Where's the money coming from?" Slater inquired, bluntly.
"I'm putting in my own fortune."
"How much is that? I'm dead to all sense of modesty, you see."
"About a million dollars," said O'Neil.
"Humph! That won't get us started."
"I've raised another million in New York." The chief was smiling and did not seem to resent this inquisitiveness in the least.
"Nothing but a shoe-string!"
"My dear 'Happy,'" laughed the builder, "I don't intend to complete the road."
"Then—why in blazes are you starting it?" demanded Slater in a bewilderment which the others evidently shared. "It's one thing to build a railroad on a contractor's commission, but it's another thing to build it and pay your own way as you go along. Half a railroad ain't any good."
"Once my right-of-way is filed it will put those projects from Cortez out of business. No one but an imbecile would think of building in from there with the Omar route made possible. Before we come to that Salmon River bridge the Copper Trust will have to buy us out!"
"That's language!" said "Happy Tom" in sudden admiration. "Those are words I understand. I withdraw my objections and give my consent to the deal."
"You are staking your whole fortune on your judgment, as I understand it," McKay ventured.
"Every dollar of it," Murray answered.
"Say, chief, that's gambling some!" young Sheldon remarked with a wondering look.
They were deep in their discussion when the telephone broke in noisily. Sheldon, being nearest to the instrument, answered it. "There's a newspaper reporter downstairs to interview you," he announced, after an instant.
"I don't grant interviews," O'Neil said, sharply. He could not guess by what evil chance the news of his plans had leaked out.
"Nothing doing!" Sheldon spoke into the transmitter. He turned again to his employer. "Operator says the party doesn't mind waiting."
O'Neil frowned impatiently.
"Throw him out!" Sheldon directed, brusquely, then suddenly dropped the receiver as if it had burnt his fingers. "Hell! It's a woman, Murray! She's on the wire. She thanks you sweetly and says she'll wait."
"A woman! A newspaper woman!" O'Neil rose and seized the instrument roughly. His voice was freezing as he said: "Hello! I refuse to be interviewed. Yes! There's no use—" His tone suddenly altered. "Miss Appleton! I beg your pardon. I'll be right down." Turning to his subordinates, he announced with a wry smile: "This seems to terminate our interview. She's Dan Appleton's sister, and therefore—" He shrugged resignedly. "Now run along. I'll see you in the morning."
His "boys" made their way down to the street, talking guardedly as they went. All were optimistic save Slater, whose face remained shrouded in its customary gloom.
"Cheer up, 'Happy'!" Dr. Gray exhorted him. "It's the biggest thing we ever tackled."
"Wait! Just wait till you've seen the place," Tom said.
"Don't you think it can be done?"
"Nope!"
"Come, come!"
"It's impossible! Of course WE'LL do it, but it's impossible, just the same. It will mean a scrap, too, like none of us ever saw, and I was raised in a logging-camp where fighting is the general recreation. If I was young, like the rest of you, I wouldn't mind; but I'm old—and my digestion's gone. I can't hardly take care of myself any more, Doc. I'm too feeble to fight or—" He signaled a passing car; it failed to stop and he rushed after it, dodging vehicles with the agility of a rabbit and swinging his heavy war-bag as if it weighed no more than a good resolution.
O'Neil entered the ladies' parlor with a feeling of extreme annoyance, expecting to meet an inquisitive, bold young woman bent upon exploiting his plans and his personality in the usual inane journalistic fashion. He was surprised and offended that Dan Appleton, in whom he had reposed the utmost faith, should have betrayed his secret. Publicity was a thing he detested at all times, and at present he particularly dreaded its effect. But he was agreeably surprised in the girl who came toward him briskly with hand outstretched.
Miss Appleton was her brother's double; she had his frank blue eyes, his straw-gold hair, his humorous smile and wide-awake look. She was not by any means beautiful!—her features were too irregular, her nose too tip-tilted, her mouth too generous for that—but she seemed crisp, clean-cut, and wholesome What first struck O'Neil was her effect of boyishness. From the crown of her plain straw "sailor" to the soles of her sensible walking-boots there was no suggestion of feminine frippery. She wore a plain shirtwaist and a tailored skirt, and her hair was arranged simply. The wave in its pale gold was the only concession to mere prettiness. Yet she gave no impression of deliberate masculinity. She struck one as merely not interested in clothes, instinctively expressing in her dress her own boyish directness and her businesslike absorption in her work.
"You're furious, of course; anybody would be," she began, then laughed so frankly that his eyes softened and the wrinkles at their corners deepened.
"I fear I was rude before I learned you were Dan's sister," he apologized. "But you see I'm a bit afraid of newspaper people."
"I knew you'd struggle—although Dan described you as a perfectly angelic person."
"Indeed!"
"But I'm a real reporter, so I won't detain you long. I don't care where you were born or where you went to school, or what patent breakfast-food you eat. Tell me, are you going to build another railroad?"
"I hope so. I'm always building roads when my bids are low enough to secure the contracts; that's my business."
"Are you going to build one in Alaska?"
"Possibly! There seems to be an opportunity there—but Dan has probably told you as much about that as I am at liberty to tell. He's been over the ground."
She pursed her lips at him. "You know very well, or you ought to know, that Dan wouldn't tell me a thing while he's working for you. He hasn't said a word, but—Is that why you came in frowning like a thunder-cloud? Did you think he set me on your trail?"
"I think I do know that he wouldn't do anything really indiscreet." Murray regarded her with growing favor. There was something about this boyish girl which awakened the same spontaneous liking he had felt upon his first meeting with her brother. He surprised her by confessing boldly:
"I AM building a railroad—to the interior of Alaska. I've been east and raised the money, my men are here; we'll begin operations at once."
"That's what Mr. Gordon told me about his scheme, but he hasn't done much, so far."
"My line will put his out of business, also that of the Trust, and the various wildcat promoters."
"Where does your road start from?"
"The town of Omar, on King Phillip Sound, near Hope and Cortez. It will run up the Salmon River and past the glaciers which those other men refused to tackle."
"If I weep, it is for joy," said the girl. "I don't like Curtis Gordon. I call him Simon Legree."
"Why?"
"Well, he impresses me as a real old-time villain—with the riding-boots and the whip and all that. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is my favorite play, it's so funny. This is a big story you've given me, Mr. O'Neil."
"I realize that."
"It has the biggest news value of anything Alaskan which has 'broken' for some time. I think you are a very nice person to interview, after all."
"Wait! I don't want you to use a word of what I've told you."
Miss Appleton's clearly penciled brows rose inquiringly. "Then why didn't you keep still?"
"You asked me. I told you because you are Dan Appleton's sister. Nevertheless, I don't want it made public."
"Let's sit down," said the girl with a laugh. "To tell you the truth, I didn't come here to interview you for my paper. I'm afraid I've tried your patience awfully." A faint flush tinged her clear complexion. "I just came, really, to get some news of Dan."
"He's perfectly well and happy, and you'll see him in a few days." Miss Appleton nodded. "So he wrote, but I couldn't wait! Now won't you tell me all about him—not anything about his looks and his health, but little unimportant things that will mean something. You see, I'm his mother and his sister and his sweetheart."
O'Neil did as he was directed and before long found himself reciting the details of that trying trip up the Salmon River. He told her how he had sent the young engineer out to run the preliminary survey for the new railroad, and added: "He is in a fair way to realize his ambition of having you with him all the time. I'm sure that will please you."
"And it is my ambition to make enough money to have him with me," she announced. With an air of some importance she continued: "I'll tell you a secret: I'm writing for the magazines—stories!" She sat back awaiting his enthusiasm. When she saw that it was not forthcoming she exclaimed: "My! How you do rave over the idea!"
"I congratulate you, of course, but—"
"Now don't tell me that you tried it once. Of course you did. I know it's a harmless disease, like the measles, and that everybody has it when they're young. Above all, don't volunteer the information that your own life is full of romance and would make a splendid novel. They all say that."
Murray O'Neil felt the glow of personal interest that results from the discovery in another of a congenial sense of humor.
"I didn't suppose you had to write," he said. "Dan told me you had invested your fortune and were on Easy Street."
"That was poetic license. I fictionized slightly in my report to him because I knew he was doing so well."
"Then your investment didn't turn out fortunately?"
Miss Appleton hesitated. "You seem to be a kindly, trusting person. I'm tempted to destroy your faith in human nature."
"Please don't."
"Yes, I shall. My experience may help you to avoid the pitfalls of high finance. Well, then, it was a very sad little fortune, to begin with, like a boy in grammar-school—just big enough to be of no assistance. But even a boy's-size fortune looked big to me. I wanted to invest it in something sure—no national-bank stock, subject to the danger of an absconding cashier, mind you; no government bonds with the possibility of war to depreciate them; but something stable and agricultural, with the inexhaustible resources of nature back of it. This isn't my own language. I cribbed it from the apple-man."
"Apple-man?"
"Yes. He had brown eyes, and a silky mustache, and a big irrigation plan over east of the mountains. You gave him your money and he gave you a perfectly good receipt. Then he planted little apple trees. He nursed them tenderly for five years, after which he turned them over to you with his blessing, and you lived happily for evermore. At least that was the idea. You couldn't fail to grow rich, for the water always bubbled through his little ditch and it never froze nor rained to spoil things, I used to love apples. And then there was my name, which seemed a good omen. But lately I've considered changing 'Appleton' to 'Berry' or 'Plummer' or some other kind of fruit."
"I infer that the scheme failed." O'Neil's eyes were half closed with amusement.
"Yes. It was a good scheme, too, except for the fact that the irrigation ditch ran uphill, and that there wasn't any water where it started from, and that apples never had been made to grow in that locality because of something in the soil, and that Brown-eyed Betty's title to the land wouldn't hold water any more than the ditch. Otherwise I'm sure he'd have made a success and I'd have spent my declining years in a rocking-chair under the falling apple blossoms, eating Pippins and Jonathans and Northern Spies. I can't bear to touch them now. Life at my boarding-house is one long battle against apple pies, apple puddings, apple tapioca. Ugh! I hate the very word."
"I can understand your aversion," laughed O'Neil. "I wonder if you would let me order dinner for both of us, provided I taboo fruit. Perhaps I'll think of something more to tell you about Dan. I'm sure he wouldn't object—"
"Oh, my card is all the chaperon I need; it takes me everywhere and renders me superior to the smaller conventionalities." She handed him one, and he read:
ELIZA V. APPLETON
THE REVIEW
"May I ask what the 'V' stands for?" He held up the card between his thumb and finger.
Miss Appleton blushed, for all the world like a boy, then answered, stiffly:
"It stands for Violet. But that isn't my fault, and I'm doing my best to live it down."