Chapter VI: Part 6

"No; I can't very well go away--for business reasons."

The slow smile was dimpling again at the corners of the perfect mouth.

"You are going to need a little help, Montague--my help--aren't you? It occurs to me that you can well afford to show me some little friendly attention while I am Robinson-Crusoed here waiting for father to come back."

"Let me understand," he broke in, frowning across the table at her. "You are willing to ignore what has happened--to that extent? You are not forgetting that in the eyes of the law I am a criminal?"

She made a faint little gesture of impatience.

"Why do you persist in dragging that in? I am not supposed to know anything about your business affairs, with Watrous Dunham or anybody else. Besides, no one knows me here, and no one cares. Besides, again, I am a stranger in a strange city and we are--or we used to be--old friends."

Her half-cynical tone made him frown again, thoughtfully, this time.

"Women are curious creatures," he commented. "I used to think I knew a little something about them, but I guess it was a mistake. What do you want me to do?"

"Oh, anything you like; anything that will keep me from being bored to death."

Smith laid his napkin aside and glanced at his watch.

"There is a play of some kind on at the opera-house, I believe," he said, rising and going around to draw her chair aside. "If you'd care to go, I'll see if I can't hold somebody up for a couple of seats."

"That is more like it. I used to be afraid that you hadn't a drop of sporting blood in you, Montague, and I am glad to learn, even at this late day, that I was mistaken. Take me up-stairs, and we'll go to the play."

They left the dining-room together, and there was more than one pair of eyes to follow them in frank admiration. "What a strikingly handsome couple," said a bejewelled lady who sat at the table nearest the door; and her companion, a gentleman with restless eyes and thin lips and a rather wicked jaw, said: "Yes; I don't know the woman, but the man is Colonel Baldwin's new financier; the fellow who calls himself 'John Smith.'"

The bediamonded lady smiled dryly. "You say that as if you had a mortal quarrel with his name, Crawford. If I were the girl, _I_ shouldn't find fault with the name. You say you don't know her?"

Stanton had pushed his chair back and was rising. "Take your time with the ice-cream, and I'll join you later up-stairs. I'm going to find out who the girl is, since you want to know."

On the progress through the lobby to the elevators there were others to make remarks upon the handsome pair; among them the ex-cowboy mine owner whose name was still "Billy" Starbuck to everybody in the Timanyoni region.

"Say! wouldn't that jar you, now?" he muttered to himself. And again: "This John Smith fellow sure does need a guardian--and for just this one time I reckon I might as well butt in and be it. If he's fixing to shake that little Corona girl he's sure going to earn what's coming to him. That's my ante."

XVI

Broken Threads

Mr. Crawford Stanton's attempt to find out who Smith's dinner companion was began with a casual question shot at the hotel clerk; with that, and a glance at the register. From the clerk he learned Miss Richlander's name and the circumstances under which she had become a waiting transient in the hotel. From the register he got nothing but the magnate's name and the misleading address, "Chicago."

"Is Mr. Richlander a Chicago man?" he asked of the clerk.

"No. He merely registered from his last stop--as a good many people do. His home town is Lawrenceville."

"Which Lawrenceville is that?" Stanton inquired; but the clerk shook his head.

"You may search me, Mr. Stanton. I didn't ask. It's in Indiana, isn't it? You might find out from Miss Richlander."

Stanton became thoughtful for a moment and then crossed the lobby to his business office, which had an entrance from the hotel ground floor. Behind the closed door, which he took the precaution to lock, he turned on the light and opened a large atlas. A glance at the town listings revealed some half-dozen Lawrencevilles, in as many different States, one State offering two, for good measure. That ended the search for the moment, and a little later he went up-stairs to rejoin the resplendent lady, who was taking her after-dinner ease in the most comfortable lounging-chair the mezzanine parlors afforded.

"No good," he reported. "The girl's name is Richlander, and she--or her father--comes from one of half a dozen 'Lawrencevilles'--you can take your choice among 'em."

"Money?" queried the comfortable one.

"Buying mines in the Topaz," said the husband mechanically. He was not thinking specially of Mr. Josiah Richlander's possible or probable rating with the commercial agencies; he was wondering how well Miss Richlander knew John Smith, and in what manner she could be persuaded to tell what she might know. While he was turning it over in his mind the two in question, Smith and the young woman, passed through the lobby on their way to the theatre. Stanton, watching them narrowly from the vantage-point afforded by the galleried mezzanine, drew his own conclusions. By all the little signs they were not merely chance acquaintances or even casual friends. Their relations were closer--and of longer standing.

Stanton puzzled over his problem a long time, long after Mrs. Stanton had forsaken the easy chair and had disappeared from the scene. His Eastern employers were growing irascibly impatient, and the letters and telegrams were beginning to have an abrasive quality disagreeably irritating to a hard-working field captain. Who was this fellow Smith, and what was his backing? they were beginning to ask; and with the asking there were intimations that if Mr. Crawford Stanton were finding his task too difficult, there was always an alternative.

As a business man Stanton was usually able to keep irritating personalities at a proper distance. But the Timanyoni-Escalante war was beginning to get on his nerves. At first, it had presented itself as the simplest of business campaigns. A great land grab had been carried through, and there was an ample water-supply to transform the arid desert into ranch acres with enormous increases in values. A farmers' ditch company, loosely organized and administered, was the sole obstacle in the way, and upon his arrival in Brewster, Stanton had set blithely about removing it.

Just when all was going well, when the farmers were almost in sight of their finish, and the actual stock absorption had fairly begun, the new factor had broken in; a young man capable and daring to a degree that was amazing, even in the direct and courageous West. Where and how Smith would strike, Stanton never knew until after the blow had been sent home. Secrecy, the most difficult requirement in any business campaign, had been so strictly maintained that up to the present evening of cogitations in the Hophra House mezzanine, Stanton was still unable to tell his New York and Washington employers positively whether Smith had money--Eastern money--behind him, or was engineering the big coup alone. Kinzie was steadfastly refusing to talk, and the sole significant fact, thus far, was that practically all of the new High Line stock had been taken up by local purchasers.

Stanton was still wrestling with his problem when the "handsome couple" returned from the play. The trust field captain saw them as they crossed the lobby to the elevator and again marked the little evidences of familiarity. "That settles it," he mused, with an outthrust of the pugnacious jaw. "She knows more about Smith than anybody else in this neck of woods--_and she's got it to tell_!"

Stanton began his inquisition for better information the following day, with the bejewelled lady for his ally. Miss Richlander was alone and unfriended in the hotel--and also a little bored. Hence she was easy of approach; so easy that by luncheon time the sham promoter's wife was able to introduce her husband. Stanton lost no moment investigative. For the inquiring purpose, Smith was made to figure as a business acquaintance, and Stanton was generous in his praises of the young man's astounding financial ability.

"He's simply a wonder, Miss Richlander!" he confided over the luncheon-table. "Coming here a few weeks ago, absolutely unknown, he has already become a prominent man of affairs in Brewster. And so discreetly reticent! To this good day nobody knows where he comes from, or anything about him."

"No?" said Miss Verda. "How singular!" But she did not volunteer to supply any of the missing biographical facts.

"Absolutely nothing," Stanton went on smoothly. "And, of course, his silence about himself has been grossly misinterpreted. I have even heard it said that he is an escaped convict."

"How perfectly absurd!" was the smiling comment.

"Isn't it? But you know how people will talk. They are saying now that his name isn't Smith; that he has merely taken the commonest name in the category as an _alias_."

"I can contradict that, anyway," Miss Richlander offered. "His name is really and truly John Smith."

"You have known him a long time, haven't you?" inquired the lady with the headlight diamonds.

"Oh, yes; for quite a long time, indeed."

"That was back in New York State?" Stanton slipped in.

"In the East, yes. He comes of an excellent family. His father's people were well-to-do farmers, and one of his great-uncles on his mother's side was on the supreme bench in our State; he was chief justice during the later years of his life."

"What State did you say?" queried Stanton craftily. But Miss Verda was far too wide-awake to let him surprise her.

"Our home State, of course. I don't believe any member of Mr. Smith's immediate family on either side has ever moved out of it."

Stanton gave it up for the time being, and was convinced upon two points. Miss Richlander's reticence could have but one meaning: for some good reason, Smith would not, or dare not, give any home references. That was one point, and the second was that Miss Richlander knew, and knew that others wanted to know--and refused to tell. Stanton weighed the probabilities thoughtfully in the privacy of his office. There were two hypotheses: Smith might have business reasons for the secrecy--he might have backers who wished to remain completely unknown in their fight against the big land trust; but if he had no backers the other hypothesis clinched itself instantly--he was in hiding; he had done something from which he had run away.

It was not until after office hours that Stanton was able to reduce his equation to its simplest terms, and it was Shaw, dropping in to make his report after his first day's work as clerk and stenographer in the High Line headquarters, who cleared the air of at least one fog bank of doubts.

"I've been through the records and the stock-books," said the spy, when, in obedience to orders, he had locked the office door. "Smith is playing a lone hand. He flimflammed Kinzie for his first chunk of money, and after that it was easy. Every dollar invested in High Line has been dug up right here in the Timanyoni. Here's the list of stockholders."

Stanton ran his eye down the string of names and swore when he saw Maxwell's subscription of $25,000. "Damn it!" he rasped; "and he's Fairbairn's own son-in-law!"

"So is Starbuck, for that matter; and he's in for twenty thousand," said Shaw. "And, by the way, Billy is a man who will bear watching. He's hand-in-glove with Smith, and he's onto all of our little crooks and turns. I heard him telling Smith to-day that he owed it to the company to carry a gun."

Stanton's smile showed his teeth.

"I wish he would; carry one and kill somebody with it. Then we'd know what to do with him."

The spy was rolling a cigarette and his half-closed eyes had a murderous glint in them.

"Me, for instance?" he inquired cynically.

"Anybody," said Stanton absently. He was going over the list of stockholders again and had scarcely heard what Shaw had said.

"That brings us down to business, Mr. Stanton," said the ex-railroad clerk slowly. "I'm not getting money enough out of this to cover the risk--my risk."

The man at the desk looked up quickly.

"What's that you say? By heavens, Shaw, have I got to send you over the road before you'll come to your senses? I've spoken once, and I'll do it just this one time more: you sing small if you want to keep out of jail!"

Shaw had lighted his cigarette and was edging toward the door.

"Not this trip, Mr. Stanton," he said coolly. "If you've got me, I've got you. I can find two men who will go into court and swear that you paid Pete Simms money to have Smith sandbagged, that day out at Simms's place at the dam! I may have to go to jail, as you say; but I'll bet you five to one that you'll beat me to it!" And with that he snapped the catch on the locked door and went away.

Some three hours after this rather hostile clash with the least trustworthy, but by far the most able, of his henchmen, Crawford Stanton left his wife chatting comfortably with Miss Richlander in the hotel parlors and went reluctantly to keep an appointment which he had been dreading ever since the early afternoon hour when a wire had come from Copah directing him to meet the "Nevada Flyer" upon its arrival at Brewster. The public knew the name signed to the telegram as that of a millionaire statesman; but Stanton knew it best as the name of a hard and not over-scrupulous master.

The train was whistling for the station when Stanton descended from his cab and hurried down the long platform. He assumed that the great personage would be travelling in a private car which would be coupled to the rear end of the "Flyer," and his guess was confirmed. A white-jacketed porter was waiting to admit him to the presence when the train came to a stand, and as he climbed into the vestibule of the luxurious private car, Stanton got what comfort he could out of the thought that the interview would necessarily be limited by the ten minutes' engine-changing stop of the fast train.

The presence chamber was the open compartment of the palace on wheels, and it held a single occupant when Stanton entered; a big-bodied man with bibulous eyes and a massive square-angled head and face, a face in which the cartoonists emphasized the heavy drooping mustache and the ever-present black cigar growing out of it.

"Hello, Crawford," the great man grunted, making no move to lift his huge body out of the padded lounging-chair. "You got my wire?"

"Yes," returned the promoter, limiting himself to the one word.

"What's the matter with you here on this land deal? Why don't you get action?"

Stanton tried to explain as fully as might be, holding in view the necessity for haste. The big man in the easy chair was frowning heavily when the explanation was finished.

"And you say this one man has blocked the game? Why the devil don't you get rid of him--buy him, or run him off, or something?"

"I don't believe he can be bought."

"Well, then, chase him out. We can't afford to be hung up this way indefinitely by every little amateur that happens to come along and sit in the game. Get action and do something. From what you say, this fellow is probably some piker who has left his country for his country's good. Get the detectives after him and run him down."

"That will take time, and time is what we haven't got."

The big man pulled himself up in his chair and glared savagely at the protester.

"Stanton, you make me tired--very tired! You know what we have at stake in this deal, and thus far you're the only man in it who hasn't made good. You've had all the help you've asked for, and all the money you wanted to spend. If you've lost your grip, say so plainly, and get down and out. We don't want any 'has-been' on this job. If you are at the end of your resources----"

The conductor's shout of "All aboard!" dominated the clamor of the station noises, and the air-brakes were singing as the engineer of the changed locomotives tested the connections. Stanton saw his chance to duck and took it.

"I have been trying to stop short of anything that might make talk," he said. "This town might easily be made too hot to hold us, and----"

"You're speaking for yourself, now," rapped out the tyrant. "What the devil do we care for the temperature of Brewster? I've only one word for you, Crawford: _you get busy and give us results_. Skip out, now, or you'll get carried by. And, say; let me have a wire at Los Angeles, not later than Thursday. Get that?"

Stanton got it: also, he escaped, making a flying leap from the moving train. At the cab rank he found the motor-cab which he had hired for the drive down from the hotel. Climbing in, he gave a brittle order to the chauffeur. Simultaneously a man wearing the softest of Stetsons lounged away from his post of observation under a near-by electric pole and ran across the railroad plaza to unhitch and mount a wiry little cow-pony. Once in the saddle, however, the mounted man did not hurry his horse. Having overheard Stanton's order-giving, there was no need to keep the motor-cab in sight as it sputtered through the streets and out upon the backgrounding mesa, its ill-smelling course ending at a lonely road-house in the mesa hills on the Topaz trail.

When the hired vehicle came to a stand in front of the lighted bar-room of the road-house, Stanton gave a waiting order to the driver and went in. Of the dog-faced barkeeper he asked an abrupt question, and at the man's jerk of a thumb toward the rear, the promoter passed on and entered the private room at the back.

The private room had but one occupant--the man Lanterby, who was sitting behind a round card-table and vainly endeavoring to make one of the pair of empty whiskey-glasses spin in a complete circuit about a black bottle standing on the table.

Stanton pulled up a chair and sat down, and Lanterby poured libations for two from the black bottle. The promoter, ordinarily as abstemious as a Trappist, drained his portion at a gulp.

"Well?" he snapped, pushing the bottle aside. "What did you find out?"

"I reckon it can be done, if it has to be," was the low-toned reply.

"Done and well covered up?"

"Yep. It'll be charged up to the high water--maybe."

"Is the river still rising?"

"A little bit higher every night now. That's the way it comes up. The snow on the mountain melts in the day and the run-off comes in the night."

"You can handle it by yourself, can't you?"

"Me and Boogerfield can."

"All right. Get everything ready and wait for the word from me. You didn't let Pegleg in on it, did you?"

"I had to. We'd have to work from his joint."

"That was a bad move. Simms would sell you out if anybody wanted to buy. He'd sell his best friend," frowned Stanton.

Lanterby showed the whites of his eyes and a set of broken teeth in a wolfish grin.

"Pete can't run fast enough to sell me out," he boasted. "I'll have somethin' in my clothes that'll run faster than he can, with that wooden leg o' his."

Stanton nodded and poured himself another drink--a larger one than the first; and then thought better of it and spilled the liquor on the floor.

"That will do for the dynamite part of it. It's a last resort, of course. We don't want to have to rebuild the dam, and I have one more string that I want to pull first. This man Smith: I've got a pointer on him, at last. Is Boogerfield still feeling sore about the man-handling Smith gave him?"

"You bet your life he is."

"Good. Keep him stirred up along that line." Stanton got up and looked thirstily at the bottle, but let it alone. "That's all for to-night. Stay out of sight as much as you can, and go easy on the whiskey. I may not come here again. If I don't, I'll send you one of two words. 'Williams' will mean that you're to strike for the dam. 'Jake' will mean that you are to get Boogerfield fighting drunk and send him after Smith. Whichever way it comes out, you'll find the money where I've said it will be, and you and Boogerfield had better fade away--and take Pegleg with you, if you can."

The hired car was still waiting when Stanton went out through the bar-room and gave the driver his return orders. And, because the night was dark, neither of the two at the car saw the man in the soft Stetson straighten himself up from his crouching place under the back-room window and vanish silently in the gloom.

XVII

A Night of Fiascos

Smith had seen nothing of Miss Richlander during the day of the Stanton plottings, partly because there was a forenoon meeting of the High Line stockholders called for the purpose of electing him secretary and treasurer in fact of the company, and partly because the major portion of the afternoon was spent in conference with Williams at the dam.

The work of construction had now reached its most critical stage, and Williams was driving it strenuously. Each twenty-four hours, with the recurring night rise from the melting snows, the torrenting river reached a higher water-mark, and three times in as many weeks the engineer had changed from a quick-setting cement to a still quicker, time-saving and a swift piling-up of the great dike wall being now the prime necessities.

Returning from the dam site quite late in the evening, Smith spent a hard-working hour or more at his desk in the Kinzie Building offices; and it was here that Starbuck found him.

"What?" said the new secretary, looking up from his work when Starbuck's wiry figure loomed in the doorway, "I thought you were once more a family man, and had cut out the night prowling."

Starbuck jack-knifed himself comfortably in a chair.

"I was. But the little girl's run away again; gone with her sister--Maxwell's wife, you know--to Denver to get her teeth fixed; and I'm foot-loose. Been butting in a little on your game, this evening, just to be doing. How's tricks with you, now?"

"We're strictly in the fight," declared Smith enthusiastically. "We closed the deal to-day for the last half-mile of the main ditch right of way, which puts us up on the mesa slope above the Escalante Grant. If they knock us out now, they'll have to do it with dynamite."

"Yes," said the ex-cow-man, thoughtfully; "with dynamite." Then: "How is Williams getting along?"

"Fine! The water is crawling up on him a little every night, but with no accidents, he'll be able to hold the flood rise when it comes. The only thing that worries me now is the time limit."

"The time limit?" echoed Starbuck. "What's that?"

"It's the handicap we inherit from the original company. Certain State rights to the water were conveyed in the old charter, on condition that the project should be completed, or at least be far enough along to turn water into the ditches, by a given date. This time limit, which carries over from Timanyoni Ditch to Timanyoni High Line, expires next week. We're petitioning for an extension, but if we don't get it we shall still be able to back the water up so that it will flow into the lower level of ditches by next Thursday; that is, barring accidents."

"Yes; with no accidents," mused Starbuck. "Can't get shut of the 'if,' no way nor shape, can we? So that's why the Stanton people have been fighting so wolfishly for delay, is it? Wanted to make the High Line lose its charter? John, this is a wicked, wicked world, and I can sympathize with the little kiddie who said he was going out in the garden to eat worms." Then he switched abruptly. "Where did you corral all those good looks you took to the opera-house last night, John?"

Smith's laugh was strictly perfunctory.

"That was Miss Verda Richlander, an old friend of mine from back home. She is out here with her father, and the father has gone up into the Topaz country to buy him a gold brick."

"Not in the Topaz," Starbuck struck in loyally. "We don't make the bricks up there--not the phony kind. But let that go and tell me something else. A while back, when you were giving me a little song and dance about the colonel's daughter, you mentioned another woman--though not by name, if you happen to recollect. I was just wondering if this Miss Rich-people, or whatever her name is, might be the other one."

Again the new secretary laughed--this time without embarrassment. "You've called the turn, Billy. She is the other one."

"H'm; chasing you up?"

"Oh, no; it was just one of the near-miracles. She didn't know I was here, and I had no hint that she was coming."

"I didn't know," commented the reformed cowboy. "Sometimes when you think it's a cold trail, it's a warm one; and then again when you think it's warm, it fools you."

"Oh, pshaw!" scoffed the trail-maker, "you make me weary, Billy. We are merely good friends. No longer ago than last night I had the strongest possible proof of Miss Richlander's friendship."

"Did, eh? All right; it's your roast; not mine. But I'm going to pull one chestnut out of the fire for you, even if I do get my fingers burned. This Miss Rich-folks has had only one day here in Brewster, but she's used it in getting mighty chummy with the Stantons. Did you know that?"

"What!" ejaculated Smith.

"Jesso," smiled Starbuck. "She had her luncheon with 'em to-day, and for an hour or so this evening the three of 'em sat together up in the Hophra inside-veranda parlor. Does that figure as news to you?"

"It does," said Smith simply; and he added: "I don't understand it."

"Funny," remarked the ex-cow-man. "It didn't ball me up for more than a minute or two. Stanton fixed it some way--because he needed to. Tell me something, John; could this Miss Rich-garden help Stanton out in any of his little schemes, if she took a notion?"

Smith turned away and stared at the blackened square of outer darkness lying beyond the office window.

"She could, Billy--but she won't," he answered.

"You can dig up your last dollar and bet on that, can you?"

"Yes, I think I can."

"H'm; that's just what I was most afraid of."

"Don't be an ass, Billy."

"I'm trying mighty hard not to be, John, but sometimes the ears will grow on the best of us--in spite of the devil. What I mean is this: when a woman thinks enough of a man to keep his secrets, she's mighty likely to think too much of him to keep those same secrets from spreading themselves on the bill-boards when the pinch comes."

"I'm no good at conundrums," said Smith. "Put it in plain words."

"So I will," snapped Starbuck, half morosely. "Two nights ago, when you were telling me about this Miss Rich-acres, you said there was nothing to it, and I said you never could tell, when there was a woman in it. I saw you two when you came out of the Hophra dining-room together last night, and I saw the look in that girl's eyes. Do you know what I said to myself right then, John? I said: 'Oh, you little girl out at the Hillcrest ranch--good-by, you!'"

Smith's grin was half antagonistic. "You _are_ an ass, Billy," he asserted. "I never was in love with Verda Richlander, nor she with me."

"Speak for yourself and let it hang there, John. You can't speak for the woman--no man ever can. What I'm hoping now is that she doesn't know anything about you that Stanton could make use of."

Again the High Line's new secretary turned to stare at the black backgrounded window.

"You mean that she might hear of--of Miss Corona?" he suggested.

"You've roped it down, at last," said the friendly enemy. "Stanton'll tell her--he'll tell her anything and everything that might make her turn loose any little bit of information she may have about you. As I said a minute ago, I'm hoping she hasn't got anything on you, John."

Smith was still facing the window when he replied. "I'm sorry to have to disappoint you, Starbuck. What Miss Richlander could do to me, if she chooses, would be good and plenty."

The ex-cowboy mine owner drew a long breath and felt for his tobacco-sack and rice-paper.

"All of which opens up more talk trails," he said thoughtfully. "Since you wouldn't try to take care of yourself, and since your neck happens to be the most valuable asset Timanyoni High Line has, just at present, I've been butting in, as I told you. Listen to my tale of woe, if you haven't anything better to do. Besides the Miss Rich-ranches episode there are a couple of others. Want to hear about 'em?"

Smith nodded.

"All right. A little while past dinner this evening, Stanton had a hurry call to meet the 'Nevada Flyer.' Tailed onto the train there was a private luxury car, and in the private car sat a gentleman whose face you've seen plenty of times in the political cartoons, usually with cuss-words under it. He is one of Stanton's bosses; and Stanton was in for a wigging--and got it. I couldn't hear, but I could see--through the car window. He had Stanton standing on one foot before the train pulled out and let Crawford make his get-away. You guess, and I'll guess, and we'll both say it was about this Escalante snap which is aiming to be known as the Escalante fizzle. Ain't it the truth?"

Again Smith nodded, and said: "Go on."

"After Number Five had gone, Stanton broke for his auto-cab, looking like he could bite a nail in two. I happened to hear the order he gave the shover, and I had my cayuse hitched over at Bob Sharkey's joint. Naturally, I ambled along after Crawford, and while I didn't beat him to it, I got there soon enough. It was out at Jeff Barton's road-house on the Topaz trail, and Stanton was shut up in the back room with a sort of tin-horn 'bad man' named Lanterby."

"You listened?" said Smith, still without eagerness.

"Right you are. And they fooled me. Two schemes were on tap; one pointing at Williams and the dam, and the other at you. These were both 'last resorts'; Stanton said he had one more string to pull first. If that broke--well, I've said it half a dozen times already, John: you'll either have to hire a body-guard or go heeled. I'm telling you right here and now, that bunch is going to get you, even if it costs money!"

"You say Stanton said he had one more string to pull: he didn't give it a name, did he?"

"No, but I've got a notion of my own," was the ready answer. "He's trying to get next to you through the women, with this Miss Rich-pasture for his can-opener. But when everything else fails, he is to send a password to Lanterby, one of two passwords. 'Williams' means dynamite and the dam: 'Jake' means the removal from the map of a fellow named Smith. Nice prospect, isn't it?"

Smith was jabbing his paper-knife absently into the desk-blotter. "And yet we go on calling this a civilized country!" he said meditatively. Then with a sudden change of front: "I'm in this fight to stay until I win out or die out, Billy; you know that. As I have said, Miss Verda can kill me off if she chooses to; but she won't choose to. Now let's get to work. It's pretty late to rout a justice of the peace out of bed to issue a warrant for us, but we'll do it. Then we'll go after Lanterby and make him turn state's evidence. Come on; let's get busy."

But Starbuck, reaching softly for a chair-righting handhold upon Smith's desk, made no reply. Instead, he snapped his lithe body out of the chair and launched it in a sudden tiger-spring at the door. To Smith's astonishment the door, which should have been latched, came in at Starbuck's wrenching jerk of the knob, bringing with it, hatless, and with the breath startled out of him, the new stenographer, Shaw.

"There's your state's evidence," said Starbuck grimly, pushing the half-dazed door-listener into a chair. "Just put the auger a couple of inches into this fellow and see what you can find."

Measured by any standard of human discomfort, Richard Shaw had an exceedingly bad quarter of an hour to worry through when Smith and Starbuck applied the thumbscrews and sought by every means known to modern inquisitorial methods to force a confession out of him.

Caring nothing for loyalty to the man who was paying him, Shaw had, nevertheless, a highly developed anxiety for his own welfare; and knowing the dangerous ground upon which he stood, he evaded and shuffled and prevaricated under the charges and questionings until it became apparent to both of his inquisitors that nothing short of bribery or physical torture would get the truth out of him. Smith was not willing to offer the bribe, and since the literal thumbscrews were out of the question, Shaw was locked into one of the vacant rooms across the corridor until his captors could determine what was to be done with him.

"That is one time when I fired and missed the whole side of the barn," Starbuck admitted, when Shaw had been remanded to the makeshift cell across the hall. "I know that fellow is on Stanton's pay-roll; and it's reasonably certain that he got his job with you so that he could keep cases on you. But we can't prove anything that we say, so long as he refuses to talk."

"No," Smith agreed. "I can discharge him, and that's about all that can be done with him. We can't even tax him with listening. You heard what he said--that he saw the light up here from the street, and came up to see if I didn't need him."

"He is a pretty smooth article," said Starbuck reflectively. "He used to be a clerk in Maxwell's railroad office, and he was mixed up in some kind of crookedness, I don't remember just what."

Smith caught quickly at the suggestion.

"Wait a minute, Billy," he broke in; and then: "There's no doubt in your mind that he's a spy?"

"Sure, he is," was the prompt rejoinder.

"I was just thinking--he has heard what was said here to-night--which is enough to give Stanton a pretty good chance to outfigure us again."

"Right you are."

"In which case it would be little short of idiotic in us to turn him loose. We've got to hold him, proof or no proof. Where would we be apt to catch Maxwell at this time of night?"

"At home and in bed, I reckon."

"Call him up on the 'phone and state the case briefly. Tell him if he has any nip on Shaw that would warrant us in turning him over to the sheriff, we'd like to know it."

"You're getting the range now," laughed the ex-cow-man, and instead of using the desk set, he went to shut himself into the sound-proof telephone-closet.

When he emerged a few minutes later he was grinning exultantly. "That was sure a smooth one of yours, John. Dick gave me the facts. Shaw's a thief; but he has a sick sister on his hands--or said he had--and the railroad didn't prosecute. Dick says for us to jug him to-night and to-morrow morning he'll swear out the necessary papers."

"Good. We'll do that first; and then we'll go after this fellow Lanterby. I want to get Stanton where I can pinch him, Billy; no, there's nothing personal about it; but when a great corporation like the Escalante Land Company gets down to plain anarchy and dynamiting, it's time to make somebody sweat for it. Let's go and get Shaw."

Together they went across the corridor, and Smith unlocked the door of the disused room. The light switch was on the door-jamb and Starbuck found and pressed the button. The single incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling sprang alive--and showed the two men at the door an empty room and an open window. The bird had flown.

Starbuck was grinning again when he went to look out of the window. The roof of the adjoining building was only a few feet below the sill level, and there was a convenient fire-escape ladder leading to the ground.

"It's us for that road-house out on the Topaz trail before the news gets around to Stanton and Lanterby," he said definitely; and they lost no time in securing an auto for the dash.

But that, too, proved to be a fiasco. When they reached Barton's all-night place on the hill road, the bar was still open and a card game was running in an up-stairs room. Starbuck did the necessary cross-questioning of the dog-faced bartender.

"You know me, Pug, and what I can do to you if I have to. We want Hank Lanterby. Pitch out and show us where."

The barkeeper threw up one hand as if he were warding off a blow.

"You c'd have him in a holy minute, for all o' me, Billy; you sure could," he protested. "But he's gone."

"On the level?" snapped Starbuck.

"That's straight; I wouldn't lie to you, Billy. Telephone call came from town a little spell ago, and I got Hank outa bed t' answer it. He borra'd Barton's mare an' faded inside of a pair o' minutes."

"Which way?" demanded the questioner.

"T' the hills; leastways he ain't headin' f'r town when he breaks from here."

Starbuck turned to Smith with a wry smile.

"Shaw beat us to it and he scores on us," he said. "We may as well hike back, 'phone Williams to keep his eye on things up at the dam, and go to bed. There'll be nothing more doing to-night."

XVIII

A Chance to Hedge

With all things moving favorably for Timanyoni High Line up to the night of fiascos, the battle for the great water-right seemed to take a sudden slant against the local promoters, after the failure to cripple Stanton by the attempt to suppress two of his subordinates. Early the next day there were panicky rumors in the air, all pointing to a possible eleventh-hour failure of the local enterprise, and none of them traceable to any definite starting-point.

One of the stories was to the effect that the Timanyoni dam had faulty foundations and that the haste in building had added to its insecurity. By noon bets were freely offered in the pool-rooms that the dam would never stand its first filling; and on the heels of this came clamorous court petitions from ranch owners below the dam site, setting forth the flood dangers to which they were exposed and praying for an injunction to stop the work.

That this was a new move on Stanton's part, neither Smith nor Stillings questioned for a moment; but they had no sooner got the nervous ranchmen pacified by giving an indemnity bond for any damage that might be done, before it became evident that the rumors were having another and still more serious effect. It was a little past one o'clock when Kinzie sent up-stairs for Smith, and Smith wondered why, with the telephone at his elbow, the banker had sent the summons by the janitor.

When the newly elected secretary had himself shot down the elevator, he was moved to wonder again at the number of people who were waiting to see the president. The anteroom was crowded with them; and when the janitor led him around through the working room of the bank to come at the inside door to Kinzie's room, Smith thought the detour was made merely to dodge the waiting throng.

There was a crude surprise lying in wait for Smith when the door of the president's room swung open to admit him. Sitting at ease on Kinzie's big leather-covered lounge, with a huge book of engraving samples on his knees, was a round-bodied man with a face like a good-natured full moon. Instantly he tossed the book aside and sprang up.

"Why, Montague!" he burst out, "if this doesn't beat the band! Is it really you, or only your remarkably healthy-looking ghost? By George! but I'm glad to see you!"

Smith shook hands with Debritt, and if the salesman's hearty greeting was not returned in kind, the lack was due more to the turmoil of emotions he had stirred up than to any studied coolness on the part of the trapped fugitive. Fortunately, the salesman had finished showing Kinzie his samples and was ready to go, so there was no time for any awkward revelations.

"I'm at the Hophra, for just a little while, Montague, and you must look me up," was Debritt's parting admonition; and Smith was searching the salesman's eyes keenly for the accusation which ought to be in them; searching and failing to find it.

"Yes; I'll look you up, of course, Boswell. I'm at the Hophra, myself," he returned mechanically; and the next moment he was alone with Kinzie.

"You sent for me?" he said to the banker; and Kinzie pointed to a chair.

"Yes; sit down and tell me what has broken loose. I've been trying to get Baldwin or Williams on the wire--they're both at the dam, I understand--but the 'phone seems to be out of service. What has gone wrong with you people?"

Smith spread his hands. "We were never in better shape to win out than we are at this moment, Mr. Kinzie. This little flurry about newer and bigger damage suits to be brought by the valley truck-gardeners doesn't amount to anything."

"I know all about that," said the president, with a touch of impatience. "But there is a screw loose somewhere. How about that time limit in your charter? Are you going to get water into the ditches within your charter restrictions?"

"We shall clear the law, all right, within the limit," was the prompt reply. But the banker was still unsatisfied.

"Did you notice that roomful of people out there waiting to see me?" he asked. "They are High Line investors, a good many of them, and they are waiting for a chance to ask me if they hadn't better get rid of their stock for whatever it will bring. That's why I sent for you. I want to know what's happened. And this time, Mr. Smith, I want the truth."

Smith accepted the implied challenge promptly, though in his heart he knew that a net of some kind was drawing around him.

"Meaning that I haven't been telling you the truth, heretofore?" he asked hardily.

"Meaning just that," responded the banker.

"Name the time and place, if you please."

"It was the first time you came here--with Baldwin."

"No," said Smith. "I gave you nothing but straight facts at that time, Mr. Kinzie. It was your own deductions that were at fault. You jumped to the conclusion that I was here as the representative of Eastern capital, and I neither denied nor affirmed. But that is neither here nor there. We have made good in the financing, and, incidentally, we've helped the bank. You have no kick coming."

Kinzie wheeled in his chair and pointed an accusing finger at Smith.

"Mr. Smith, before we do any more business together, I want to know who you are and where you come from. If you can't answer a few plain questions I shall draw my own inferences."

Smith leaped up and towered over the thick-set elderly man in the pivot-chair.

"Mr. Kinzie, do you want me to tell you what you are? You're a trimmer--a fence-climber! Do you suppose I don't know what has happened? Stanton has started this new scare, and he has been here with you! You've thought it all over, and now you want to welsh and go over to what you think is going to be the winning side! Do it, if you feel like it--and I'll transfer our account to the little Savings concern up-town!"

There was fire in his eye and hot wrath in his tone; and once more Kinzie found his conclusions warping.

"Oh, don't fly off the handle so brashly, young man," he protested. "You've been in the banking business, yourself--you needn't deny it--and you know what a banker's first care should be. Sit down again and let's thresh this thing out. I don't want to have to drop you."

Being fairly at bay, with Debritt in town and Josiah Richlander due to come back to Brewster at any moment, Smith put his back to the wall and ignored the chair.

"You are at liberty to do anything you see fit, so far as I am concerned," he rapped out, "and whatever you do, I'll try to hand it back to you, with interest."

"That is good strong talk," retorted the banker, "but it doesn't tell me who you are, or why you are so evidently anxious to forget your past, Mr. Smith. I'm not asking much, if you'll stop to consider. And you'll give me credit for being fair and aboveboard with you. I might have held that engraving salesman and questioned him; he knows you--knows your other name."

Smith put the entire matter aside with an impatient gesture. "Leave my past record out of it, if you please, Mr. Kinzie. At the present moment I am the financial head of Timanyoni High Line. What I want to know is this: do you continue to stand with us? or do you insist upon the privilege of seesawing every time Stanton turns up with a fresh scare? Let me have it, yes or no; and then I shall know what to do."

The gray-haired man in the big chair took time to think about it, pursing his lips and making a quick-set hedge of his cropped mustache. In the end he capitulated.

"I don't want to break with you--or with Dexter Baldwin," he said, at length. "But I'm going to talk straight to you. Your little local crowd of ranchmen and mining men will never be allowed to hold that dam and your ditch right of way; never in this world, Smith."

"If you are our friend, you'll tell us why," Smith came back smartly.

"Because you have got too big a crowd to fight; a crowd that can spend millions to your hundreds. I didn't know until to-day who was behind Stanton, though I had made my own guess. You mustn't be foolish, and you mustn't pull Dexter Baldwin in over his head--which is what you are doing now."

Smith thrust his hands into his pockets and looked away.

"What do you advise, Mr. Kinzie?" he asked.

"Just this. At the present moment you seem to have a strangle-hold on the New York people that it will take a good bit of money to break. They'll break it, never fear. A Scotch terrier may be the bravest little dog that ever barked, but he can't fight a mastiff with any hope of saving his life. But there is still a chance for a compromise. Turn this muddle of yours over to me and let me make terms with the New Yorkers. I'll come as near to getting par for you as I can."

Smith, still with his hands in his pockets, took a turn across the room. It was a sharp temptation. No one knew better than he what it would mean to be involved in a long fight, with huge capital on one side and only justice and a modest bank balance on the other. To continue would be to leave Colonel Baldwin and Maxwell and Starbuck and their local following a legacy of strife and shrewd battlings. He knew that Kinzie's offer was made in good faith. It was most probably based on a tentative proposal from Stanton, who, in turn, spoke for the great syndicate. By letting go he might get the local investors out whole, or possibly with some small profit.

Against the acceptance of this alternative every fibre of the new-found manhood in him rose up in stubborn protest. Had it indeed come to a pass at which mere money could dominate and dictate, rob, steal, oppress, and ride roughshod over all opposition? Smith asked himself the question, and figured the big Missouri colonel's magnificent anger if it should be asked of him. That thought and another--the thought of what Corona would say and think if he should surrender--turned the scale.

"No, Mr. Kinzie; we'll not compromise while I have anything to say about it; we'll fight it to a finish," he said abruptly; and with that he went out through the crowded anteroom and so back to his desk in the up-stairs offices.

XIX

Two Women

For one day and yet another after the minatory interview with David Kinzie, Smith fought mechanically, developing the machine-like doggedness of the soldier who sees the battle going irresistibly against him and still smites on in sheer desperation.

As if the night of fiascos had been the turning-point, he saw the carefully built reorganization structure, reared by his own efforts upon the foundation laid by Colonel Baldwin and his ranchmen associates, falling to pieces. In spite of all he could do, the panic of stock-selling continued; the city council, alarmed by the persistent story of the unsafety of the dam, was threatening to cancel the lighting contract with Timanyoni High Line; and Kinzie, though he was doing nothing openly, had caused the word about the proposed compromise with the Escalante people to be passed far and wide among the Timanyoni stockholders, together with the intimation that disaster could be averted now only by prompt action and the swift effacement of their rule-or-ruin secretary and treasurer.

"They're after you, John," was the way the colonel put it at the close of the second day of back-slippings. "They say you're fiddlin' while Rome's a-burnin'. Maybe you know what they mean by that; I don't."

Smith did know. During the two days of stress, Miss Verda had been very exacting. There had been another night at the theatre and much time-killing after meals in the parlors of the Hophra House. Worse still, there had been a daylight auto trip about town and up to the dam. The victim was writhing miserably under the price-paying, but there seemed to be no help for it. With Kinzie and Stanton working together, with Debritt gone only as far as Red Butte and promising to return, and with Josiah Richlander still within easy reach at the Topaz mines, he stood in hourly peril of the explosion, and a single written line from Verda to her father would light the match. Smith could find no word bitter enough to fitly characterize the depths into which he had sunk. It was the newest phase of the metamorphosis. Since the night of Verda Richlander's arrival in Brewster, he had not seen Corona; he was telling himself that he had forfeited the right to see her. Out of the chaotic wreck of things but one driving motive had survived, and it had grown to the stature of an obsession: the determination to wring victory out of defeat for Timanyoni High Line; to fall, if he must fall, fighting to the last gasp and with his face to the enemy.

"I know," he said, replying, after the reflective pause, to the charge passed on by Colonel Dexter. "There is a friend of mine here from the East, and I have been obliged to show her some attention, so they say I am neglecting my job. They are also talking it around that I am your Jonah, and saying that your only hope is to pitch me overboard."

"That's Dave Kinzie," growled the Missourian. "He seems to have it in for you, some way. He was trying to tell me this afternoon that I ought not to take you out to the ranch any more until you loosen up and tell us where you came from. I told him to go and soak his addled old head in a bucket of water!"