Chapter I: Preface

"Web of Steel," as those who read will see, is a book for men, about men, and written by men.* The authorship is placed in the plural advisedly. The book is a real collaboration. In the minds of the writers there is a further pleasant association in the fact that it is a book about a father and son by a father and son, although no one must identify the writers with the characters in the story because of that relationship.

* Yet with true masculine inconsistency it is dedicated to a woman!

It is said that the success of a book, like the success of almost everything else that man at least undertakes, depends upon women; that women buy, read, discuss, and promote a novel, and if the book has no appeal to women it is forever doomed. The authors have at least proved themselves men of courage, the publishers likewise, for it cannot be too insistently set forth that this is primarily a book for men. The authors hope that even with that expressed limitation it may nevertheless appeal to women in some measure, especially those who would fain enjoy--the authors are careful not to say usurp!--masculine place and function. Let no one imagine, either, the authors hasten to assure those who may honor them by reading this preface, that there are no women in the book. On the contrary the fortunes of at least one of the men and the fate of the other are woven around the eternal feminine whom the authors have striven to make as feminine and charming, as appealing and delightful, as their large experience with the other sex permits and warrants!

For the rest, whatever may be said of the fiction the authors rest confident in the engineering. Again let there be no misapprehension, this is a novel not a treatise; who runs may read, if he does not run too fast, and no scientific course is necessary for the comprehension of the story. The authors disavow any intention of picturing any engineers alive or dead, or any particular bridge or dam, in any particular locality. The whole thing is a work of the imagination except the calculations of the engineer, which are exact when not empiric!

The book is the result of genuine co-operation and accommodation. Father and son contended together in affection, albeit sometimes rather sharply, as to what should go in and what should come out. They are happy to have arrived at a substantial agreement which, while it satisfied neither author completely, yet produced a harmonious and consecutive story, with neither too much nor too little of the personality of either inserted or withdrawn to mar its symmetry. Now let all mankind read!

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, _Father_;
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, _Son_.

THE HEMLOCKS, PARK HILL,
_Yonkers, N. Y._

CONTENTS

I

_BRIDGE_

I. Love of Woman
II. The Other Passions of the Engineer
III. The Witness for the Defense
IV. The Portage Through the Dust
V. Fall and Revelation
VI. They Cross the Bridge Together
VII. The Colonel Makes Conditions
VIII. The Lovers Make Pictures on Paper and Heart

II

_C_-10-_R_

IX. The Deflection in the Member
X. The Son of His Father Indeed
XI. The Death Message on the Wire
XII. The Failure
XIII. The Woman's Choice
XIV. For the Honor of the Son
XV. For the Honor of the Father
XVI. The Unaccepted Renunciation
XVII. That Which Lay Between

III

_DAM_

XVIII. Picket Wire and Kicking Horse
XIX. The New Rodman
XX. The Valley of Decision
XXI. Marshaling the Evidence
XXII. Working Up
XXIII. The Former and the Latter Rain
XXIV. The Battle

IV

_SPILL-WAY_

XXV. The Ancient Art of Fascination
XXVI. Once More Unto the Work
XXVII. Brute Force or Finesse
XXVIII. The Battle from Above
XXIX. The Victors
XXX. The Testimony of the Dead
XXXI. At Last to the Stars

I

BRIDGE