Mayor Poundstone and his wife arrived at the Pennington home in Redwood Boulevard at six forty-five Thursday evening. It was with a profound feeling of relief that His Honour lifted the lady from their modest little “flivver,” for once inside the Pennington house, he felt, he would be free from a peculiarly devilish brand of persecution inaugurated by his wife about three months previously. Mrs. Poundstone wanted a new automobile. And she had entered upon a campaign of nagging and complaint; hoping to wear Poundstone's resistance down to the point where he would be willing to barter his hope of salvation in return for a guarantee of peace on earth.
“I feel like a perfect fool, calling upon these people in this filthy little rattletrap,” Mrs. Poundstone protested as they passed up the cement walk toward the Pennington portal.
Mayor Poundstone paused. Had he been Medusa, the glance he bent upon his spouse would have transformed her instantly into a not particularly symmetrical statue of concrete. He had reached the breaking-point.
“In pity's name, woman,” he growled, “talk about something else. Give me one night of peace. Let me enjoy my dinner and this visit.”
“I can't help it,” Mrs. P. retorted with asperity. She pointed to Shirley Sumner's car parked under the porte-cochere. “If I had a sedan like that, I could die happy. And it only cost thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I paid six hundred and fifty for the rattletrap, and I couldn't afford that,” he almost whimpered. “You were happy with it until I was elected mayor.”
“You forget our social position, my dear,” she purred sweetly.
He could have struck her. “Hang your social position,” he gritted savagely. “Shut up, will you? Social position in a sawmill town! Rats!”
“Sh—sh! Control yourself, Henry!” She plucked gently at his arm; with her other hand she lifted the huge knocker on the front door.
“Dammit, you'll drive me crazy yet,” Poundstone gurgled, and subsided.
The Pennington butler, a very superior person, opened the door and swept them with a faintly disapproving glance. It is possible that he found Mayor Poundstone, who was adorned with a white string tie, a soft slouch hat, a Prince Albert coat, and horseshoe cut vest, mildly amusing.
The Poundstones entered. At the entrance to the living room the butler announced sonorously: “Mayor Poundstone and Mrs. Poundstone.”
“Glad to see you aboard the ship,” Colonel Pennington boomed with his best air of hearty expansiveness. “Well, well,” he continued, leading Mrs. Poundstone to a divan in front of the fire, “this is certainly delightful. My niece will be down in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Have a cigarette, Mr. Poundstone.”
In the midst of the commonplace chatter incident to such occasions, Shirley entered the room; and the Colonel, leaving her to entertain the guests, went to a small sideboard in one corner and brought forth the “materials,” as he jocularly termed them. James appeared like magic with a tray, glasses, and tiny serviettes, and the Colonel's elixir was passed to the company.
“To your beautiful eyes, Mrs. Poundstone,” was Pennington's debonair toast as he fixed Mrs. P.'s green orbs with his own. “Poundstone, your very good health, sir.”
“Dee-licious,” murmured Mrs. Poundstone. “Perfectly dee-licious. And not a bit strong!”
“Have another,” her hospitable host suggested, and he poured it, quite oblivious of the frightened wink which the mayor telegraphed his wife.
“I will, if Miss Sumner will join me,” Mrs. P. acquiesced.
“Thanks. I seldom drink a cocktail, and one is always my limit,” Shirley replied smilingly.
“Oh, well,” the Colonel retorted agreeably, “we'll make it a three-cornered festival. Poundstone, smoke up.”
They “smoked up,” and Poundstone prayed to his rather nebulous gods that Mrs. P. would not discuss automobiles during the dinner.
Alas! The Colonel's cocktails were not unduly fortified, but for all that, the two which Mrs. Poundstone had assimilated contained just sufficient “kick” to loosen the lady's tongue without thickening it. Consequently, about the time the piece de resistance made its appearance, she threw caution to the winds and adverted to the subject closest to her heart.
“I was telling Henry as we came up the walk how greatly I envied you that beautiful sedan, Miss Sumner,” she gushed. “Isn't it a perfectly stunning car?”
Poundstone made one futile attempt to head her off. “And I was telling Mrs. Poundstone,” he struck in with a pathetic attempt to appear humorous and condescending, “that a little jitney was our gait, and that she might as well abandon her passionate yearning for a closed car. Angelina, my dear, something tells me I'm going to enjoy this dinner a whole lot more if you'll just make up your mind to be real nice and resign yourself to the inevitable.”
“Never, my dear, never.” She shook a coy finger at him. “You dear old tightie,” she cooed, “you don't realize what a closed car means to a woman.” She turned to Shirley. “How an open car does blow one around, my dear!”
“Yes, indeed,” said Shirley innocently.
“Heard the McKinnon people had a man killed up in their woods yesterday, Colonel,” Poundstone remarked, hoping against hope to divert the conversation.
“Yes. The fellow's own fault,” Pennington replied. “He was one of those employees who held to the opinion that every man is the captain of his own soul and the sole proprietor of his own body—hence that it behooved him to look after both, in view of the high cost of safety-appliances. He was warned that the logging-cable was weak at that old splice and liable to pull out of the becket—and sure enough it did. The free end of the cable snapped back like a whip, and—”
“I hold to the opinion,” Mrs. Poundstone interrupted, “that if one wishes for a thing hard enough and just keeps on wishing, one is bound to get it.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Poundstone impressively, “if you would only confine yourself to wishing, I assure you your chances for success would be infinitely brighter.”
There was no mistaking this rebuke; even two cocktails were powerless to render Mrs. Poundstone oblivious to it. Shirley and her uncle saw the Mayor's lady flush slightly; they caught the glint of murder in His Honour's eye; and the keen intelligence of each warned them that closed cars should be a closed topic of conversation with the Poundstones. With the nicest tact in the world, Shirley adroitly changed the subject to some tailored shirt-waists she had observed in the window of a local dry-goods emporium that day, and Mrs. Poundstone subsided.
About nine o'clock, Shirley, in response to a meaning glance from her relative, tactfully convoyed Mrs. Poundstone upstairs, leaving her uncle alone with his prey. Instantly Pennington got down to business.
“Well,” he queried, apropos of nothing, “what do you hear with reference to the Northern-California-Gregon Railroad?”
“Oh, the usual amount of wind, Colonel. Nobody knows what to make of that outfit.”
Pennington studied the end of his cigar a moment. “Well, I don't know what to think of that project either,” he admitted presently, “But while it looks like a fake, I have a suspicion that where there's so much smoke, one is likely to discover a little fire. I've been waiting to see whether or not they will apply for a franchise to enter the city, but they seem to be taking their time about it.”
“They certainly are a deliberate crowd,” the Mayor murmured.
“Have they made any move to get a franchise?” Pennington asked bluntly. “If they have, I suppose you would be the first man to hear about it. I don't mean to be impertinent,” he added with a gracious smile, “but the fact is I noticed that windbag Ogilvy entering your office in the city hall the other afternoon, and I couldn't help wondering whether his visit was social or official.”
“Social—so far as I could observe,” Poundstone replied truthfully, wondering just how much Pennington knew, and rather apprehensive that he might get caught in a lie before the evening was over.
“Preliminary to the official visit, I dare say.”
The Colonel puffed thoughtfully for a while—for which the Mayor was grateful, since it provided time in which to organize himself. Suddenly, however, Pennington turned toward his guest and fixed the latter with a serious glance.
“I hadn't anticipated discussing this matter with you, Poundstone, and you must forgive me for it; but the fact is—I might as well be frank with you—I am very greatly interested in the operation of this proposed railroad.”
“Indeed! Financially?”
“Yes, but not in the financial way you think. If that railroad is built, it will have a very distinct effect on my finances.”
“In just what way?”
“Disastrous.”
“I am amazed, Colonel.”
“You wouldn't if you had given the subject very close consideration. The logical route for this railroad is from Willits north to Sequoia, not from Sequoia north to Grant's Pass, Oregon. Such a road as the N.C.O. contemplates will tap about one third of the redwood belt only, while a line built in from the south will tap two thirds of it. The remaining third can be tapped by an extension of my own logging-road; when my own timber is logged out, I will want other business for my road, and if the N.C.O. parallels it, I will be left with two streaks of rust on my hands.”
“Ah, I perceive. So it will, so it will!”
“You agree with me, then, Poundstone, that the N.C.O. is not designed to foster the best interests of the community. Of course you do.”
“Well, I hadn't given the subject very mature thought, Colonel, but in the light of your observations it would appear that you are quite right.”
“Of course I am right. I take it, therefore, that when the N.C.O. applies for its franchise to run through Sequoia, neither you nor your city council will consider the proposition at all.”
“I cannot, of course, speak for the city council—” Poundstone began, but Pennington's cold, amused smile froze further utterance.
“Be frank with me, Poundstone. I am not a child. What I would like to know is this: will you exert every effort to block that franchise in the firm conviction that by so doing you will accomplish a laudable public service?”
Poundstone squirmed. “I should not care, at this time, to go on record,” he replied evasively. “When I have had time to look into the matter more thoroughly—”
“Tut-tut, my dear man! Let us not straddle the fence. Business is a game, and so is politics. Neither knows any sentiment. Suppose you should favour this N.C.O. crowd in a mistaken idea that you were doing the right thing, and that subsequently numberless fellow-citizens developed the idea that you had not done your public duty? Would some of them not be likely to invoke a recall election and retire you and your city council—in disgrace?”
“I doubt if they could defeat me, Colonel.”
“I have no such doubt,” Pennington replied pointedly.
Poundstone looked up at him from under lowered lids. “Is that a threat?” he demanded tremulously.
“My dear fellow! Threaten my guest!” Pennington laughed patronizingly. “I am giving you advice, Poundstone—and rather good advice, it strikes me. However, while we're on the subject, I have no hesitancy in telling you that in the event of a disastrous decision on your part, I should not feel justified in supporting you.”
He might, with equal frankness, have said: “I would smash you.” To his guest his meaning was not obscure. Poundstone studied the pattern of the rug, and Pennington, watching him sharply, saw that the man was distressed. Then suddenly one of those brilliant inspirations, or flashes of rare intuition, which had helped so materially to fashion Pennington into a captain of industry, came to him. He resolved on a bold stroke.
“Let's not beat about the bush, Poundstone,” he said with the air of a father patiently striving to induce his child to recant a lie, tell the truth, and save himself from the parental wrath. “You've been doing business with Ogilvy; I know it for a fact, and you might as well admit it.”
Poundstone looked up, red and embarrassed. “If I had known—” he began.
“Certainly, certainly! I realize you acted in perfect good faith. You're like the majority of people in Sequoia. You're all so crazy for rail-connection with the outside world that you jump at the first plan that seems to promise you one. Now, I'm as eager as the others, but if we are going to have a railroad, I, for one, desire the right kind of railroad; and the N.C.O. isn't the right kind—that is, not for the interests I represent. Have you promised Ogilvy a franchise?”
There was no dodging that question. A denial, under the present circumstances, would be tantamount to an admission; Poundstone could not guess just how much the Colonel really knew, and it would not do to lie to him, since eventually the lie must be discovered. Caught between the horns of a dilemma, Poundstone only knew that Ogilvy could never be to him such a powerful enemy as Colonel Seth Pennington; so, after the fashion of his kind, he chose the lesser of two evils. He resolved to “come clean.”
“The city council has already granted the N.C.O. a temporary franchise,” he confessed.
Pennington sprang furiously to his feet. “Dammit.” he snarled, “why did you do that without consulting me?”
“Didn't know you were remotely interested.” Now that the ice was broken, Poundstone felt relieved and was prepared to defend his act vigorously. “And we did not commit ourselves irrevocably,” he continued. “The temporary franchise will expire in twenty-eight days—and in that short time the N.C.O. cannot even get started.”
“Have you any understanding as to an extension of that temporary franchise, in case the N.C.O. desires it?”
“Well, yes—not in writing, however. I gave Ogilvy to understand that if he was not ready in thirty days, an extension could readily be arranged.”
“Any witnesses?”
“I am not such a fool, sir,” Poundstone declared with asperity. “I had a notion—I might as well admit it—that you would have serious objection to having your tracks cut by a jump-crossing at B and Water streets.” And for no reason in life except to justify himself and inculcate in Pennington an impression that the latter was dealing with a crafty and far-seeing mayor, Poundstone smiled boldly and knowingly. “I repeat,” he said, “that I did not put it in writing.” He leaned back nonchalantly and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“You oily rascal!” Pennington soliloquized. “You're a smarter man than I thought. You're trying to play both ends against the middle.” He recalled the report of his private detective and the incident of Ogilvy's visit to young Henry Poundstone's office with a small leather bag; he was more than ever convinced that this bag had contained the bribe, in gold coin, which had been productive of that temporary franchise and the verbal understanding for its possible extension.
“Ogilvy did business with you through your son Henry,” he challenged. Poundstone started violently. “How much did Henry get out of it?” Pennington continued brutally.
“Two hundred and fifty dollars retainer, and not a cent more,” Poundstone protested virtuously—and truthfully.
“You're not so good a business man as I gave you credit for being,” the Colonel retorted mirthfully “Two hundred and fifty dollars! Oh, Lord! Poundstone, you're funny. Upon my word, you're a scream.” And the Colonel gave himself up to a sincerely hearty laugh. “You call it a retainer,” he continued presently, “but a grand jury might call it something else. However,” he went on after a slight pause, “you're not in politics for your health; so let's get down to brass tacks. How much do you want to deny the N.C.O. not only an extension of that temporary franchise but also a permanent franchise when they apply for it?”
Poundstone rose with great dignity. “Colonel Pennington, sir,” he said, “you insult me.”
“Sit down. You've been insulted that way before now. Shall we say one thousand dollars per each for your three good councilmen and true, and for yourself that sedan of my niece's? It's a good car. Last year's model, but only run about four thousand miles and in tiptop condition. It's always had the best of care, and I imagine it will please Mrs. P. immensely and grant you surcease from sorrow. Of course, I will not give it to you. I'll sell it to you—five hundred down upon the signing of the agreement, and in lieu of the cash, I will take over that jitney Mrs. Poundstone finds so distasteful. Then I will employ your son Henry as the attorney for the Laguna Grande Lumber Company and give him a retainer of twenty-five hundred dollars for one year. I will leave it to you to get this twenty-five hundred dollars from Henry and pay my niece cash for the car. Doesn't that strike you as a perfectly safe and sane proposition?”
Had a vista of paradise opened up before Mr. Poundstone, he could not have been more thrilled. He had been absolutely honest in his plea to Mrs. Poundstone that he could not afford a thirty-two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar sedan, much as he longed to oblige her and gain a greatly to be desired peace. And now the price was dangling before his eyes, so to speak. At any rate it was parked in the porte-cochere not fifty feet distant!
For the space of a minute the Mayor weighed his son's future as a corporation attorney against his own future as mayor of Sequoia—and Henry lost.
“It might be arranged, Colonel,” he murmured in a low voice—the voice of shame.
“It is already arranged,” the Colonel replied cheerfully. “Leave your jit at the front gate and drive home in Shirley's car. I'll arrange matters with her.” He laughed shortly. “It means, of course, that I'll have to telegraph to San Francisco to-morrow and buy her a later model. Thank goodness, she has a birthday to-morrow! Have a fresh cigar, Mayor.”
Riding home that night in Shirley Sumner's car Mrs. Poundstone leaned suddenly toward her husband, threw a fat arm around his neck and kissed him. “Oh, Henry, you darling!” she purred. “What did I tell you? If a person only wishes hard enough—”
“Oh, go to the devil!” he roared angrily. “You've nagged me into it. Shut up and take your arm away. Do you want me to wreck the car before we've had it an hour?”
As for Colonel Pennington, he had little difficulty in explaining the deal to Shirley, who was sleepy and not at all interested. The Poundstones had bored her to extinction, and upon her uncle's assurance that she would have a new car within a week, she thanked him and for the first time retired without offering her cheek for his good-night kiss. Shortly thereafter the Colonel sought his own virtuous couch and prepared to surrender himself to the first good sleep in three weeks. He laid the flattering unction to his soul that Bryce Cardigan had dealt him a poor hand from a marked deck and he had played it exceedingly well. “Lucky I blocked the young beggar from getting those rails out of the Laurel Creek spur,” he mused, “or he'd have had his jump-crossing in overnight—and then where the devil would I have been? Up Salt Creek without a paddle—and all the courts in Christendom would avail me nothing.”
He was dozing off, when a sound smote upon his ears. Instantly he was wide awake, listening intently, his head cocked on one side. The sound grew louder; evidently it was approaching Sequoia—and with a bound the Colonel sat up in bed, trembling in every limb.
Suddenly, out of the deep, rumbling diapason he heard a sharp click—then another and another. He counted them—six in all.
“A locomotive and two flat-cars!” he murmured. “And they just passed over the switch leading from the main-line tracks out to my log-dump. That means the train is going down Water Street to the switch into Cardigan's yard. By George, they've outwitted me!”
With the agility of a boy he sprang into his clothes, raced downstairs, and leaped into Mayor Poundstone's jitney, standing in the darkness at the front gate.
The success of Bryce Cardigan's plan for getting Ms rails down from Laurel Creek depended entirely upon the whimsy which might seize the crew of the big mogul that hauled the last load of logs out of Cardigan's redwoods on Thursday afternoon. Should the engineer and fireman decide to leave the locomotive at the logging-camp for the night, Bryce's task would be as simple as turning a hose down a squirrel-hole. On the other hand, should they run back to Sequoia with the engine, he and Ogilvy faced the alternative of “borrowing” it from the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's roundhouse; and that operation, in view of the fact that Pennington's night watchman would be certain to hear the engine leaving, offered difficulties.
Throughout the afternoon, after having sent his orders in writing to the woods-boss, via George Sea Otter (for he dared not trust to the telephone), be waited in his office for a telephone-call from the logging-camp as to what action the engine-crew had taken. He could not work; he could not think. He only knew that all depended upon the success of his coup to-night. Finally, at a quarter of six, Curtis, his woods-boss rang in.
“They're staying here all night, sir,” he reported.
“House them as far from the log-landing as possible, and organize a poker-game to keep them busy in case they don't go to bed before eight o'clock,” Bryce ordered. “In the meantime, send a man you can trust—Jim Harding, who runs the big bull-donkey, will do—down to the locomotive to keep steam up until I arrive.”
He had scarcely hung up, when Buck Ogilvy came into the office. “Well?” he queried casually.
“Safe-o, Buck!” replied Bryce. “How about your end of the contract?”
“Crowbars, picks, shovels, hack-saws to cut the rails, lanterns to work by, and men to do the work will be cached in your lumber-yard by nine o'clock, waiting for the rails to arrive.”
Bryce nodded his approval, “Then I suppose there's nothing to do but get a bite of dinner and proceed to business.”
Buck insisted on keeping an engagement to dine with Moira, and Bryce agreed to call for him at the Bon Gusto restaurant. Then Bryce went home to dine with his father. Old Cardigan was happier than his son had seen him since the return of the latter to Sequoia.
“Well, sonny, I've had a mighty pleasant afternoon,” he declared as Bryce led him to the dinner-table. “I've been up to the Valley of the Giants.”
Bryce was amazed. “Why, how could you?” he demanded. “The old skid-road is impassable, and after you leave the end of the skid-road, the trail in to Mother's grave is so overgrown with buckthorn and wild lilac I doubt if a rabbit could get through it comfortably.”
“Not a bit of it,” the old man replied. “Somebody has gone to work and planked that old skid-road and put up a hand-railing on each side, while the trail through the Giants has been grubbed out and smoothed over. All that old logging-cable I abandoned in those choppings has been strung from tree to tree alongside the path on both sides. I can go up there alone now, once George sets me on the old skid-road; I can't get lost.”
“How did you discover this?” Bryce demanded.
“Judge Moore, representing the new owner, called round this morning and took me in tow. He said his client knew the property held for me a certain sentimental value which wasn't transferred in the deed, and so the Judge had been instructed to have the skid-road planked and the forest trail grubbed out—for me. It appears that the Valley is going to be a public park, after all, but for the present and while I live, it is my private park.”
“This is perfectly amazing, partner.”
“It's mighty comforting,” his father admitted. “Guess the new owner must be one of my old friends—perhaps somebody I did a favour for once—and this is his way of repaying. Remember the old sugar-pine windfall we used to sit on? Well, it's rotted through, and bears have clawed it into chips in their search for grubs, but the new owner had a seat put in there for me—just the kind of seat I like—a lumberjack's rocking-chair made from an old vinegar-barrel. I sat in it, and the Judge left me, and I did a right smart lot o' thinking. And while it didn't lead me anywhere, still I—er—”
“You felt better, didn't you?” his son suggested.
John Cardigan nodded. “I'd like to know the name of the owner,” he said presently. “I'd like mighty well to say thank you to him. It isn't usual for people nowadays to have as much respect for sentiment in an old duffer like me as the fellow has. He sort of makes me feel as if I hadn't sold at all.”
Buck Ogilvy came out of the Bon Gusto restaurant with Moira, just as Bryce, with George Sea Otter at the wheel of the Napier, drove up to the curb. They left Moira at her boarding-house, and rolled noiselessly away.
At nine o'clock they arrived at Cardigan's log-landing and found Jim Harding, the bull-donkey engineer, placidly smoking his pipe in the cab. Bryce hailed him.
“That you, Jim?”
“You bet.”
“Run up to Jabe Curtis's shanty, and tell him we're here. Have him gather his gang and bring two pairs of overalls and two jumpers—large size—with him when he comes.”
Harding vanished into the darkness, and Buck Ogilvy climbed up into the cab and glanced at the steam-gauge. “A hundred and forty,” he announced. “Good enough!”
Presently the woods-boss, accompanied by thirty of his best men, came down to the log-landing. At Bryce's order they clambered aboard the engine and tender, hanging on the steps, on the roof of the cab, on the cowcatcher—anywhere they could find a toe-hold. Harding cast aside the two old ties which the careful engine-crew had placed across the tracks in front of the drivers as additional precaution; Buck Ogilvy cut off the air, and the locomotive and tender began to glide slowly down the almost imperceptible grade. With a slight click it cleared the switch and slid out onto the Cardigan lateral, swiftly gathering speed. A quarter of a mile down the line Buck Ogilvy applied the brakes and eased her down to twenty miles per hour.
At the junction with the main line Buck backed briskly up into the Laguna Grande woods, and coupled to the two loaded flat-cars. The woods-gang scrambled aboard the flats, and the train pulled out for Sequoia. Forty minutes later they rumbled down Water Street and slid to a grinding halt at the intersection of B Street.
From the darkness of Cardigan's drying-yard, where they had been waiting, twenty picked men of the mill-crew now emerged, bearing lanterns and tools. Under Buck Ogilvy's direction the dirt promptly began to fly, while the woods-crew unloaded the rails and piled them close to the sidewalk.
Suddenly a voice, harsh and strident with passion, rose above the thud of the picks and the clang of metal.
“Who's in charge here, and what in blazes do you mean by cutting my tracks?”
Bryce turned in time to behold Colonel Seth Pennington leap from an automobile and advance upon Buck Ogilvy. Ogilvy held a lantern up to the Colonel's face and surveyed Pennington calmly.
“Colonel,” he began with exasperating politeness, “—I presume you are Colonel Pennington—my name is Buchanan P. Ogilvy, and I am in charge of these operations. I am the vice-president and general manager of the N.C.O., and I am engaged in the blithe task of making a jump-crossing of your rails. I had hoped to accomplish this without your knowledge or consent, but now that you are here, that hope, of course, has died a-bornin'. Have a cigar.” And he thrust a perfecco under the Colonel's nose. Pennington struck it to the ground, and on the instant, half a dozen rough rascals emptied their shovels over him. He was deluged with dirt.
“Stand back, Colonel, stand back, if you please. You're in the way of the shovellers,” Buck Ogilvy warned him soothingly.
Bryce Cardigan came over, and at sight of him Pennington choked with fury. “You—you—” he sputtered, unable to say more.
“I'm the N.C.O.,” Bryce replied. “Nice little fiction that of yours about the switch-engine being laid up in the shops and the Laurel Creek bridge being unsafe for this big mogul.” He looked Pennington over with frank admiration. “You're certainly on the job, Colonel. I'll say that much for you. The man who plans to defeat you must jump far and fast, or his tail will be trod on.”
“You've stolen my engine,” Pennington almost screamed. “I'll have the law on you for grand larceny.”
“Tut-tut! You don't know who stole your engine. For all you know, your own engine-crew may have run it down here.”
“I'll attend to you, sir,” Pennington replied, and he turned to enter Mayor Poundstone's little flivver.
“Not to-night, at least,” Bryce retorted gently. “Having gone this far, I would be a poor general to permit you to escape now with the news of your discovery. You'd be down here in an hour with a couple of hundred members of your mill-crew and give us the rush. You will oblige me, Colonel Pennington, by remaining exactly where you are until I give you permission to depart.”
“And if I refuse—”
“Then I shall manhandle you, truss you up like a fowl in the tonneau of your car, and gag you.”
To Bryce's infinite surprise the Colonel smiled. “Oh, very well!” he replied. “I guess you've got the bulge on me, young man. Do you mind if I sit in the warm cab of my own engine? I came away in such a hurry I quite forgot my overcoat.”
“Not at all. I'll sit up there and keep you company.”
Half an hour passed. An automobile came slowly up Water Street and paused half a block away, evidently reconnoitering the situation. Instantly the Colonel thrust his head out the cab window.
“Sexton!” he shouted. “Cardigan's cutting in a crossing. He's holding me here against my will. Get the mill-crew together and phone for Rondeau and his woods-crew. Send the switch-engine and a couple of flats up for them. Phone Poundstone. Tell him to have the chief of police—”
Bryce Cardigan's great hand closed over the Colonel's neck, while down Water Street a dark streak that was Buck Ogilvy sped toward the automobile, intending to climb in and make Pennington's manager a prisoner also. He was too late, however. Sexton swung his car and departed at full speed down Water Street, leaving the disappointed Buck to return panting to the scene of operations.
Bryce Cardigan released his hold on Pennington's neck. “You win, Colonel,” he announced. “No good can come of holding you here any longer. Into your car and on your way.”
“Thank you, young man,” the Colonel answered, and there was a metallic ring in his voice. He looked at his watch in the glare of a torch. “Plenty of time,” he murmured. “Curfew shall not ring to-night.” Quite deliberately he climbed into the Mayor's late source of woe and breezed away.
Colonel Pennington did not at once return to his home, however. Instead, he drove up to the business centre of the town. The streets were deserted, but one saloon—the Sawdust Pile—was still open.
Pennington strode through the bar and into the back room, where a number of poker-games were in progress. For a moment he stood, his cold, ophidian glance circling the room until it came to rest on no less a personage than the Black Minorca, an individual with whom the reader has already had some slight acquaintance. It will be recalled that the Black Minorca led the futile rush against Bryce Cardigan that day in Pennington's woods.
The Colonel approached the table where the Black Minorca sat thumbing the edges of his cards, and touched the cholo on the shoulder. The Black Minorca turned, and Pennington nodded to him to follow; whereupon the latter cashed in his chips and joined his employer on the sidewalk. Here a whispered conversation ensued, and at its conclusion the Black Minorca nodded vigorously.
“Sure!” he assured the Colonel. “I'll fix 'em good and plenty.”
Together Pennington and the Black Minorca entered the automobile and proceeded swiftly to the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's mill-office. From a locker the Colonel produced a repeating rifle and three boxes of cartridges, which he handed to the cholo, who departed without further ado into the night.
Twenty minutes later, from the top of a lumber-pile in Cardigan's drying-yard, Bryce Cardigan saw the flash of a rifle and felt a sudden sting on his left forearm. He leaped around in front of the cowcatcher to gain the shelter of the engine, and another bullet struck at his feet and ricocheted off into the night. It was followed by a fusillade, the bullets kicking up the freshly disturbed earth among the workers and sending them scurrying to various points of safety. In an instant the crossing was deserted, and work had been stopped, while from the top of the adjacent lumber-pile the Black Minorca poured a stream of lead and filthy invective at every point which he suspected of harbouring a Cardigan follower.
“I don't think he's hurt anybody,” Buck Ogilvy whispered as he crouched with Bryce beside the engine, “but that's due to his marksmanship rather than his intentions.”
“He tried hard enough to plug me,” Bryce declared, and showed the hole through his sleeve. “They call him the Black Minorca, and he's a mongrel greaser who'd kill his own mother for a fifty-dollar bill.”
“I'd like to plug him,” Buck murmured regretfully.
“What would be the use? This will be his last night in Humboldt County—”
A rifle shot rang out from the side of B Street; from the lumber-pile across the street, Bryce and Ogilvy heard a suppressed grunt of pain, and a crash as of a breaking board. Instantly out of the shadows George Sea Otter came padding on velvet feet, rifle in hand—and then Bryce understood.
“All right, boss,” said George simply as he joined Bryce and Ogilvy under the lee of the locomotive. “Now we get busy again.”
“Safe-o, men,” Ogilvy called. “Back to the job.” And while Bryce, followed by the careless George Sea Otter, went into the lumber-yard to succour the enemy, Ogilvy set an example to the men by stepping into the open and starting briskly to work with a shovel.
At the bottom of the pile of lumber the Black Minorca was discovered with a severe flesh-wound in his right hip; also he was suffering from numerous bruises and contusions. George Sea Otter possessed himself of the fallen cholo's rifle, while Bryce picked the wretch up and carried him to his automobile.
“Take the swine over to the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's hospital and tell them to patch him up,” he ordered George Sea Otter. “I'll keep both rifles and the ammunition here for Jules Rondeau and his woods-gang. They'll probably be dropping in on us about two a.m., if I know anything about Colonel Pennington's way of doing things.”
Having dispatched the Black Minorca to hold up the work until the arrival of reinforcements, Colonel Pennington fairly burned the streets en route to his home. He realized that there would be no more sleep for him that night, and he was desirous of getting into a heavy ulster before venturing forth again into the night air.
The violent slam with which he closed the front door after him brought Shirley, in dressing-gown and slippers, to the staircase.
“Uncle Seth!” she called.
“Here!” he replied from the hall below.
“What's the matter?”
“There's the devil to pay,” he answered. “That fellow Cardigan is back of the N.C.O., after all, and he and Ogilvy have a gang of fifty men down at the intersection of Water and B streets, cutting in a jump-crossing of our line.”
He dashed into the living room, and she heard him calling frantically into the telephone.
“At last!” she murmured, and crept down the stairs, pausing behind the heavy portieres at the entrance to the living room.
“That you, Poundstone?” she heard him saying rapidly into the transmitter. “Pennington speaking. Young Bryce Cardigan is behind that N.C.O. outfit, and it's a logging-road and not intended to build through to Grant's Pass at all. Cardigan and Ogilvy are at Water and B streets this very instant with a gang of fifty men cutting in a jump-crossing of my line, curse them! They'll have it in by six o'clock to-morrow morning if something isn't done—and once they get it in, the fat's in the fire.
“Telephone the chief of police and order him to take his entire force down there, if necessary, and stop that work. To blazes with that temporary franchise! You stop that work for two hours, and I'll do the rest. Tell the chief of police not to recognize that temporary franchise. He can be suspicious of it, can't he, and refuse to let the work go on until he finds you? And you can be hard to find for two hours, can you not? Delay, delay, man! That's all I want... Yes, yes, I understand. You get down about daylight and roast the chief of police for interfering, but in the meantime!... Thank you, Poundstone, thank you. Good-bye.”
He stood at the telephone, the receiver still held to his ear and his right forefinger holding down the hook while the line cleared. When he spoke again, Shirley knew he was calling his mill-office. He got a response immediately, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour.
“Sexton? Pennington speaking. I've sent over the Black Minorca with a rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition... What? You can hear him shooting already? Bully boy with a crockery eye! He'll clean that gang out and keep them from working until the police arrive. You've telephoned Rondeau, have you?... Good! He'll have his men waiting at the log-landing, and there'll be no delay. As soon as you've seen the switch-engine started for the woods, meet me down at Water and B streets. Sexton, we've got to block them. It means a loss of millions to me if we fail!”
Shirley was standing in the doorway as he faced about from the telephone. “Uncle Seth,” she said quietly, “use any honourable method of defeating Bryce Cardigan, but call off the Black Minorca. I shall hold you personally responsible for Bryce Cardigan's life, and if you fail me, I shall never forgive you.”
“Silly, silly girl!” he soothed her. “Don't you know I would not stoop to bush-whacking? There's some shooting going on, but its wild shooting, just to frighten Cardigan and his men off the job.”
“You can't frighten him,” she cried passionately, “You know you can't. He'll kill the Black Minorca, or the Black Minorca will kill him. Go instantly and stop it.”
“All right, all right!” he said rather humbly, and sprang down the front steps into the waiting car. “I'll play the game fairly, Shirley, never fear.”
She stood in the doorway and watched the red tail-light, like a malevolent eye, disappear down the street. And presently as she stood there, down the boulevard a huge gray car came slipping noiselessly—so noiselessly, in fact, that Shirley recognized it by that very quality of silence. It was Bryce Cardigan's Napier.
“George!” she called. “Come here.”
The car slid over to the gate and stopped at the sight of the slim white figure running down the garden walk.
“Is Mr. Cardigan hurt?” she demanded in an agony of suspense.
George Sea Otter grunted contemptuously. “Nobody hurt 'cept the Black Minorca. I am taking him to your company hospital, miss. He tried to shoot my boss, so I shoot him myself once through the leg. Now my boss says: 'Take him to the Laguna Grande hospital, George.' Me, I would drop this greaser in the bay if I was the boss.”
She laughed hysterically. “On your way back from the hospital stop and pick me up, George,” she ordered. “This senseless feud has gone far enough. I must stop it—at once.”
He touched his broad hat, and she returned to the house to dress.
Meanwhile Colonel Pennington had reached the crossing once more, simultaneously with the arrival of Sam Perkins, the chief of police, accompanied by two automobiles crammed with patrolmen. Perkins strutted up to Bryce Cardigan and Buck Ogilvy.
“What's the meaning of all this row, Mr. Cardigan?” he demanded.
“Something has slipped, Sam,” Bryce retorted pleasantly. “You've been calling me Bryce for the past twenty years, and now you're mistering me! The meaning of this row, you ask?” Bryce continued. “Well, I'm engaged in making a jump-crossing of Colonel Pennington's tracks, under a temporary franchise granted me by the city of Sequoia. Here's the franchise.” And he thrust the document under the police chief's nose.
“This is the first I've heard about any franchise,” Sam Perkins replied suspiciously. “Seems to me you been mighty secret about this job. How do I know this ain't a forgery?”
“Call up the mayor and ask him,” Bryce suggested.
“I'll do that,” quoth Mr. Perkins ponderously. “And in the meantime, don't do any more digging or rail-cutting.” He hurried away to his automobile, leaving a lieutenant in charge of the squad.
“Also in the meantime, young man,” Colonel Pennington announced, “you will pardon me if I take possession of my locomotive and flat-cars. I observe you have finished unloading those rails.”
“Help yourself, Colonel,” Bryce replied with an assumption of heartiness he was far from feeling.
“Thank you so much, Cardigan.” With the greatest good nature in life, Pennington climbed into the cab, reached for the bell-cord, and rang the bell vigorously. Then he permitted himself a triumphant toot of the whistle, after which he threw off the air and gently opened the throttle. He was not a locomotive-engineer but he had ridden in the cab of his own locomotive and felt quite confident of his ability in a pinch.
With a creak and a bump the train started, and the Colonel ran it slowly up until the locomotive stood on the tracks exactly where Buck Ogilvy had been cutting in his crossing; whereupon the Colonel locked the brakes, opened his exhaust, and blew the boiler down. And when the last ounce of steam had escaped, he descended and smilingly accosted Bryce Cardigan.
“That engine being my property,” he announced, “I'll take the short end of any bet you care to make, young man, that it will sit on those tracks until your temporary franchise expires. I'd give a good deal to see anybody not in my employ attempt to get up steam in that boiler until I give the word. Cut in your jump-crossing now, if you can, you whelp, and be damned to you. I've got you blocked!”
“I rather imagine this nice gentleman has it on us, old dear,” chirped Buck Ogilvy plaintively. “Well! We did our damndest, which angels can't do no more. Let us gather up our tools and go home, my son, for something tells me that if I hang around here I'll bust one of two things—this sleek scoundrel's gray head or one of my bellicose veins! Hello! Whom have we here?”
Bryce turned and found himself facing Shirley Sumner. Her tender lip was quivering, and the tears shone in her eyes like stars. He stared at her in silence.
“My friend,” she murmured tremulously, “didn't I tell you I would not permit you to build the N.C.O.?”
He bowed his head in rage and shame at his defeat. Buck Ogilvy took him by the arm. “''Tis midnight's holy hour,'” he quoted, “'and silence now is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er a still and pulseless world.' Bryce, old chap, this is one of those occasions where silence is golden. Speak not. I'll do it for you. Miss Sumner,” he continued, bowing graciously, “and Colonel Pennington,” favouring that triumphant rascal with an equally gracious bow, “we leave you in possession of the field—temporarily. However, if anybody should drive up in a hack and lean out and ask you, just tell him Buck Ogilvy has another trump tucked away in his kimono.”
Bryce turned to go, but with a sudden impulse Shirley laid her hand on his arm—his left arm. “Bryce!” she murmured.
He lifted her hand gently from his forearm, led her to the front of the locomotive, and held her hand up to the headlight. Her fingers were crimson with blood.
“Your uncle's killer did that, Shirley,” he said ironically. “It's only a slight flesh-wound, but that is no fault of your allies. Good-night.”
And he left her standing, pale of face and trembling, in the white glare of the headlight.