The Daughter of a Magnate Part 31

"I have worked here on a small salary and done everything but maul spikes to keep down expenses on the division, because we had to make some showing to whoever wanted to buy our junk. In this way I took a roving commission and packed my bag from an office where I could acquire nothing I did not already know to a position where I could get hold of the problem of mountain transportation and cut the coal bills of the road in two."

"Have you done it?"

"Have I cut the coal bills in two? No; but I have learned how. It will cost money to do that----"

"How much money?"

"Thirty millions of dollars."

"A good deal of money."

"No."

"No?"

"No. Don't let us be afraid to face figures. You will spend a hundred millions before you quit, Mr. Brock, and you will make another hundred millions in doing it. To put it bluntly, the mountains must be brought to terms. For three years I have eaten and lived and slept with them.

I know every grade, curve, tunnel, and culvert from here to Bear Dance--yes, to the coast. The day of heavy gradients and curves for transcontinental tonnage is gone by. If I ever get a chance, I will rip this right of way open from end to end and make it possible to send freight through these ranges at a cost undreamed of in the estimates of to-day. But that was not my only object in coming to the mountains."

"Go ahead."

"Mr. Bucks and the men he has gathered around him--Callahan, Blood and the rest of us--are railroad men. Railroading is our business; we know nothing else. There was an embarra.s.sing chance that when our buyer came he might be hostile to the present management. Happily," Glover bowed to the Pittsburg magnate, "he isn't; but he might have been----"

"I see."

"We were prepared for that."

"How?"

"I shouldn't speak of this if I did not know you were Mr. Bucks'

closest friend. Even he doesn't know it, but six months of my own time--not the company's--I put in on a matter that concerned my friends and myself, and I have the notes for a new line to parallel this if it were needed--and Blood and I have the only pa.s.s within three hundred miles north or south to run it over. These were some of the reasons, Mr. Brock, why I came to the mountains."

"I understand. I understand perfectly. Mr. Glover, what is your age, sir?"

The time seemed ripe to put Gertrude's second hint into play.

"That is a subject I never discuss with anyone, Mr. Brock."

He waited just a moment to let the magnate get his breath, and continued, "May I tell you why? When the road went into the receivership, I was named as one of the receivers on behalf of the Government. The President, when I first met him during my term, asked for my father, thinking he was the man that had been recommended to him. He wouldn't believe me when I a.s.sured him I was his appointee.

'If I had known how young you were, Glover,' said he to me, afterward, 'I never should have dared appoint you.' The position paid me twenty-five thousand dollars a year for four years; but the incident paid me better than that, for it taught me never to discuss my age."

"I see. I see. A fine point. You have taught _me_ something. By the way, about the pa.s.s you spoke of--I suppose you understand the importance of getting hold of a strategic point like that to--a--forestall--compet.i.tion?"

"I have hold of it."

"I do not mind saying to you, under all the circ.u.mstances, that there has been a little friction with the Harrison people. Do you see? And, for reasons that may suggest themselves, there may be more. They might conclude to run a line to the coast themselves. The young man has, I believe, been turned down----"

"I understood the--the slate had been--changed slightly," stammered Glover, coloring.

"There might be resentment, that's all. Blood is loyal to us, I presume."

"There's no taint anywhere in Morris Blood. He is loyalty itself."

"What would you think of him as General Manager? Callahan goes to the river as Traffic Manager. Mr. Bucks, you know, is the new President; these are his recommendations. What do you think of them?"

"No better men on earth for the positions, and I'm mighty glad to see them get what they deserve."

"Our idea is to leave you right here in the mountains." It was hard to be left completely out of the new deal, but Glover did not visibly wince. "With the t.i.tle," added Mr. Brock, after he knew his arrow had gone home, "with the t.i.tle of Second Vice-president, which Mr. Bucks now holds. That will give you full swing in your plans for the rebuilding of the system. I want to see them carried out as the estimates I've been studying this winter show. Don't thank me. I did not know till yesterday they were entirely your plans. You can have every dollar you need; it will rest with you to produce the results. I guess that's all. No, stop. I want you to go East with us next week for a month or two as our guest. You can forward your work the faster when you get back, and I should like you to meet the men whose money you are to spend. Were you waiting to see Gertrude?"

"Why--yes, sir--I----"

"I'll see whether she's around."

Gertrude did not appear for some moments, then she half ran and half glided in, radiant. "I couldn't get away!" she exclaimed. "He's talking about you yet to Aunt Jane and Marie. He says you're charged with dynamite--_I_ knew that--a most remarkable young man. How did you ever convince him you knew anything? I am confident you don't. You must have taken him somehow aback, didn't you?"

"If you want to give your father a touch of asthma," suggested Glover, "ask him how old I am; but he had me scared once or twice," admitted the engineer, wiping the cold sweat from his wrists.

"_Did_ he give his consent?"

"Why--hang it--I--we got to talking business and I forgot to----"

"So like you, dear. However, it must be all right, for he said he should need your help in buying the coast branches and The Short Line."

"The Short Line," gasped Glover. "Well, I haven't inventoried lately.

If we marry in June----"

"Don't worry about that, for we sha'n't marry in June, my love."

"But when we do, we shall need some money for a wedding-trip----"

"We certainly shall; a lot of it, dearie."

"I may have ten or twelve hundred left after that is provided for. But my confidence in your father's judgment is very great, and if he's going to make up a pool, my money is at his service, as far as it will go, to buy The Short Line--or any other line he may take a fancy to."

"Why, he's just telling Marie about your making a hundred thousand dollars in four years by being wonderfully shrewd----"

"But that confounded mine that I told you about----"

"You dear old stupid. Never mind, you have made a real strike to-day.

But if you ever again delude papa into thinking you know more than I do, I shall expose you without mercy."

The train, a private car special, carrying Mr. Brock, chairman of the board, and his family, the new president and the second vice-president elect, was pulling slowly across the long, high spans of the Spider bridge. Glover and Gertrude had gone back to the observation platform.

Leaning on his arm, she was looking across the big valley and into the west. The sun, setting clear, tinged with gold the far snows of the mountains.

"It is less than a year," she was murmuring, "since I crossed this bridge; think of it. And what bridges have I not crossed since! See.

Your mountains are fading away----"

"My mountains faded away, dear heart, don't you know, when you told me I might love you. As for those"--his eyes turned from the distant ranges back to her eyes--"after all, they brought me you."