A Fool for Love Part 19

McGrath's fireman was uncoupling the engine from the Rosemary, and Mr.

Somerville Darrah, complacently lighting his after breakfast cigar, came across to the hissing ember fire.

"A word with you, gentlemen, if you will faveh me," he began. "I am about to run down to Argentine on my engine, and I propose leaving the ladies in your cha'ge, Misteh Winton. Will you give me your word of honeh, seh, that they will not be annoyed in my absence?"

Winton sprang up, losing his temper again.

"It's--well, it's blessed lucky that you know your man, Mr. Darrah!"

he exploded. "Go on about your business--which is to bring another army of deputy-sheriffs down on us, I take it. You know well enough that no man of mine will lay a hand on your car so long as the ladies are in it."

The Rajah thanked him, dismissed the matter with a Chesterfieldian wave of his hand, climbed to his place in the cab, and the engine shrilled away around the curve and disappeared in the snow-wreaths.

Adams rose and stretched himself.

"By Jove! when it comes to cheek, pure and unadulterated, commend me to a Virginia gentleman who has acquired the proper modic.u.m of Western bluff," he laughed. Then, with a cavernous yawn dating back to the sleepless night: "Since there is nothing immediately pressing, I believe I'll go and call on the ladies. Won't you come along for a while?"

"No!" said Winton savagely; and the a.s.sistant lounged off by himself.

Some little time afterward Winton, glooming over his handful of spitting embers, saw Adams and Virginia come out to stand together on the observation platform of the Rosemary. They talked long and earnestly, and when Winton was beginning to add the dull pang of unreasoning jealousy to his other hurtings, Adams beckoned him. He went, not unwillingly, or altogether willingly.

"I should think you might come and say 'Good morning' to me, Mr.

Winton. I'm not Uncle Somerville," said Miss Carteret.

Winton said "Good morning," not too graciously, and Adams mocked him.

"Besides being a bear with a sore head, Miss Carteret thinks you're not much of a hustler, Jack," he said coolly. "She knows the situation; knows that you were stupid enough to promise not to lay hands on the car when we could have pushed it out of the way without annoying anybody. None the less, she thinks that you might find a way to go on building your railroad without breaking your word to Mr.

Darrah."

Winton put his sore-heartedness far enough behind him to smile and say: "Perhaps Miss Virginia will be good enough to tell me how."

"I don't know how," she rejoined quickly. "And you'd only laugh at me if I should tell you what I thought of."

"You might try it and see," he ventured. "I'm desperate enough to take suggestions from anyone."

"Tell me something first: is your railroad obliged to run straight along in the middle of this nice little ridge you've been making for it?"

"Why--no; temporarily, it can run anywhere. But the problem is to get the track laid beyond this crossing before your uncle gets back with a trainload of armed guards."

"Any kind of track would do, wouldn't it?--just to secure the crossing?"

"Certainly; anything that would hold the weight of the octopod. We shall have to rebuild most of the line, anyway, as soon as the frost comes out of the ground in the spring."

The brown eyes became far-seeing.

"I was thinking," she said musingly. "There is no time to make another nice little ridge. But you have piles and piles of logs over there,"--she meant the cross-ties,--"couldn't you build a sort of cobhouse ridge with those between your track and Uncle's, and cross behind the car? Don't laugh, please."

But Winton was far enough from laughing at her. Why so simple an expedient had not suggested itself instantly he did not stop to inquire. It was enough that the Heaven-born idea had been given.

"Down out of that, Morty!" he cried. "It's one chance in a thousand.

Pa.s.s the word to the men; I'll be with you in a second." And when Adams was rousing the track force with the bawling shout of "_Ev-erybody_!" Winton looked up into the brown eyes.

"My debt to you was already very great: I owe you more now," he said.

But she gave him his quittance in a whiplike retort.

"And you will stand here talking about it when every moment is precious? Go!" she commanded; and he went.

So now we are to conceive the maddest activity leaping into being in full view of the watchers at the windows of the private car. Winton's chilled and sodden army, welcoming any battle-cry of action, flew to the work with a will. In a twinkling the corded piles of cross-ties had melted to reappear in cobhouse balks bridging an angle from the Utah embankment to that of the spur track in the rear of the blockading Rosemary. In briefest time the hammermen were spiking the rails on the rough-and-ready trestle, and the Italians were bringing up the crossing-frogs.

But the Rajah, astute colonel of industry, had not left himself defenseless. On the contrary, he had provided for this precise contingency by leaving McGrath's fireman in mechanical command on the Rosemary. If Winton should attempt to build around the private car, the fireman was to wait till the critical moment: then he was to lessen the pressure on the automatic air-brakes and let the car drop back down the grade just far enough to block the new crossing.

So it came about that this mechanical lieutenant waited, laughing in his sleeve, until he saw the Italians coming with the crossing-frogs.

Then, judging the time to be fully ripe, he ducked under the Rosemary to "bleed" the air-brake.

Winton heard the hiss of the escaping air above all the industry clamor; heard, and saw the car start backward. Then he had a flitting glimpse of a man in grimy overclothes scrambling terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone. The fireman had "bled" the air-brake too freely, and the liberated car, gathering momentum with every wheel-turn, surged around the circling spur track and shot out masterless on the steeper gradient of the main line.

Now, for the occupants of a runaway car on a Rocky Mountain canyon line there is death and naught else. Winton saw, in a phantasmagoric flash of second sight, the meteor flight of the heavy car; saw the Reverend Billy's ineffectual efforts to apply the hand-brakes, if by good hap he should even guess that there were any hand-brakes; saw the car, bounding and lurching, keeping to the rails, mayhap, for some few miles below Argentine, where it would crash headlong into the upward climbing Carbonate train, and all would end.

In unreasoning misery, he did the only thing that offered: ran blindly down his own embankment, hoping nothing but that he might have one last glimpse of Virginia clinging to the hand-rail before she should be lost to him for ever.

But as he ran a thought white-hot from the furnace of despair fell into his brain to set it ablaze with purpose. Beyond the litter of activities the octopod was standing, empty of its crew. Bounding up into the cab, he released the brake and sent the great engine flying down the track of the new line.

In the measuring of the first mile the despair-born thought took shape and form. If he could outpace the runaway on the parallel line, stop the octopod and dash across to the C. G. R. track ahead of the Rosemary, there was one chance in a million that he might fling himself upon the car in mid flight and alight with life enough left to help Calvert with the hand-brakes.

Now, in the most unhopeful struggle it is often the thing least hoped for that comes to pa.s.s. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the tableau; then man and station and lurching car were left behind, and the fierce strife to gain the needed mile of lead went on.

Three miles more of the surging, racking, nerve-killing race and Winton had his hand's-breadth of lead and had picked his place for the million-chanced wrestle with death. It was at the C. G. R. station of Tierra Blanca, just below a series of sharp curves which he hoped might check a little the arrow-like flight of the runaway.

Twenty seconds later the telegraph operator at the lonely little way station of Tierra Blanca saw a heroic bit of man-play. The upward-bound Carbonate train was whistling in the gorge below when out of the snow-wreaths shrouding the new line a big engine shot down to stop with fire grinding from the wheels, and a man dropped from the high cab to dash across to the station platform.

At the same instant a runaway pa.s.senger car thundered out of the canyon above. The man crouched, flung himself at it in pa.s.sing, missed the forward hand-rail, caught the rear, was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his feet and trailed through the air like the thong of a whip-lash, yet made good his hold and clambered on.

This was all the operator saw, but when he had snapped his key and run out he heard the shrill squeal of the brakes on the car and knew that the man had not risked his life for nothing.

And on board the Rosemary? Winton, spent to the last breath, was lying p.r.o.ne on the railed platform, where he had fallen when the last twist had been given to the shrieking brakes.

"Run, Calvert! Run ahead and--stop--the--up-train!" he gasped; then the light went out of the gray eyes and Virginia wept unaffectedly and fell to dabbling his forehead with handfuls of snow.

"Help me get him in to the divan, Cousin Billy," said Virginia, when all was over and the Rosemary was safely coupled in ahead of the upcoming train to be slowly pushed back to Argentine.

But Winton opened his eyes and struggled to his feet unaided.

"Not yet," he said. "I've left my automobile on the other side of the creek; and besides, I have a railroad to build. My respects to Mr.

Darrah, and you may tell him I'm not beaten yet." And he swung over the railing and dropped off to mount the octopod and to race it back to the front.

Three days afterward, to a screaming of smelter whistles and other noisy demonstrations of mining-camp joy, the Utah Short Line laid the final rail of its new Extension in the Carbonate yards.