The Iron Trail Part 31

"Many! Too many to enumerate. It is my condition that you both leave Omar at once."

Gloria Gerard looked at her daughter in troubled indecision, but Natalie answered firmly:

"We can't do that."

"So! You have your own plans, no doubt, and it doesn't trouble you that you are standing in the way of your mother's respectability!" His voice was harsh, his sneer open. "Bless my soul! Is the generosity to be all on my side? Or has this man O'Neil forbidden you to a.s.sociate with me?"

"I don't trust you." Natalie flared up. "I'm afraid you are trying--"

"It is my condition, and I am adamant. Believe me, O'Neil knows of your disgrace, or will learn of it in time. It would be well to protect your name while you can." Turning to the other woman, he said loudly: "Gloria, the girl is ready to sacrifice you to her own ends."

"Wait!" Natalie's nerves were tingling with dislike of the man, but she said steadily: "I shall do exactly as mother wishes."

Be it said to the credit of Gloria Gerard that she did not hesitate.

"I shall be here when you are ready," she told him.

With an exclamation of rage Gordon rose and strode out of the room.

XIII

WE JOURNEY TO A PLACE OF MANY WONDERS

Curtis Gordon's men broke camp upon his return from Omar, and by taking the east bank of the Salmon River pressed through to the upper valley.

Here they recrossed to the west side and completed their survey, with the exception of the three-mile gap which Dan Appleton held.

Gordon continued to smart under the sting of his defeat, however.

O'Neil had gotten the better of him in argument, and Natalie's simplicity had proved more than a match for his powers of persuasion.

At no time had he seriously considered making Mrs. Gerard his wife, but he had thought to entice the two women back under his own roof, in order to humble both them and their self-appointed protector. He felt sure that Natalie's return to Hope and her residence there would injure her seriously in the eyes of the community, and this would be a stab to O'Neil. Although he had failed for the moment, he did not abandon the idea. His display of anger upon leaving the hotel had been due mainly to disappointment at the checkmate. But knowing well the hold he possessed upon the older woman, he laid it away for later use when the fight grew hot, and meanwhile devoted himself to devising further measures by which to hara.s.s his enemy and incidentally advance his own fortunes.

Gordon's business career had consisted of a series of brilliant manipulations whereby, with little to go upon, he had forced financial recognition for himself. No one knew better than he the unstable foundation beneath his Alaskan enterprises; yet more than once he had turned as desperate ventures into the semblance of success. By his present operations he sought not only to hamper O'Neil, but to create an appearance of opposition to both him and the Trust that could be coined into dollars and cents. There are in the commercial world money wolves who prey upon the weak and depend upon the spirit of compromise in their adversaries. Gordon was one of these. He had the faculty of s.n.a.t.c.hing at least half a victory from apparent defeat, and for this reason he had been able to show a record sufficiently impressive to convince the average investor of his ability.

By purchasing for a song the McDermott rights at Kyak he had placed himself in position to share in the benefits of the Heidlemann breakwater, and by rapidly pus.h.i.+ng his tracks ahead he made his rivalry seem formidable. As a means of attack upon O'Neil he adopted a procedure common in railroad-building. He amended his original survey so that it crossed that of the S. R. & N. midway between the lower bridge over the Salmon River and the glaciers, and at that point began the hasty erection of a grade.

It was at the cost of no little inconvenience that he rushed forward a large body of men and supplies, and began to lay track across the S. R.

& N. right-of-way. If Appleton could hold a hillside, he reasoned, he himself could hold a crossing, if not permanently, at least for a sufficient length of time to serve his purpose.

His action came as a disagreeable surprise to Omar. These battles for crossings have been common in the history of railroading, and they have not infrequently resulted in sanguinary affrays. Long after the ties are spiked and the heads are healed, the legal rights involved have been determined, but usually amid such a tangle of conflicting testimony and such a confusion of technicalities as to leave the justice of the final decision in doubt. In the unsettled conditions that prevailed in the Salmon River valley physical possession of a right-of-way was at least nine-tenths of the law, and O'Neil realized that he must choose between violence and a compromise. Not being given to compromise, he continued his construction work, and drew closer, day by day, to the point of contact.

Reports came from the front of his opponent's preparations for resistance. Gordon had laid several hundred yards of light rails upon his grade, and on these he had mounted a device in the nature of a "go-devil" or skip, which he shunted back and forth by means of a donkey-engine and steel cable. With this in operation across the point of intersection like a shuttle, interference would be extremely dangerous. In addition, he had built blockhouses and breast-works of ties, and in these, it was reported, he had stationed the pick of his hired helpers, armed and well provisioned.

Toward this stronghold Murray O'Neil's men worked, laying his road-bed as straight as an arrow, and as the intervening distance decreased anxiety and speculation at Omar increased.

Among those who hung upon the rumors of the approaching clash with greatest interest was Eliza Appleton. Since Dan's departure for the front she had done her modest best to act the part he had forced upon her, and in furtherance of their conspiracy she had urged O'Neil to fulfil his promise of taking her over the work. She felt an ever-growing curiosity to see those glaciers, about which she had heard so much; and she reflected, though not without a degree of self-contempt, that nothing could be more favorable to her design than the intimacy of several days together on the trail. Nothing breeds a closer relations.h.i.+p than the open life, nothing brings people more quickly into accord or hopeless disagreement. Although she had no faintest idea that Murray could or would ever care seriously for her, she felt that there was a bare possibility of winning his transient interest and in that way, perhaps, affording her brother time in which to attain his heart's desire. Of course, it was all utterly absurd, yet it was serious enough to Dan; and her own feelings--well, they didn't matter.

She was greatly excited when O'Neil announced one evening:

"I'm ready to make that trip to the front, if you are. I have business at Kyak; so after we've seen the glaciers we will go down there and you can take in the coal-fields."

"How long shall we be gone?"

"Ten days, perhaps. We'll start in the morning."

"I'm ready to leave at a moment's notice."

"Then perhaps you'd better help Natalie."

"Natalie!" exclaimed Eliza, seeing all her well-laid plans tottering.

"Is she going?"

"Oh yes! It's an opportunity she shouldn't miss, and I thought it would be pleasanter for you if she went with us."

Eliza was forced to acknowledge his thoughtfulness, although it angered her to be sacrificed to the proprieties. Her newspaper training had made her feel superior to such things, and this of all occasions was one upon which she would have liked to be free of mere conventions. But of course she professed the greatest delight.

O'Neil had puzzled her greatly of late; for at times he seemed wrapped up in Natalie, and at other times he actually showed a preference for Eliza's own company. He was so impartial in his attentions that at one moment the girl would waver in her determination and in the next would believe herself succeeding beyond her hope. The game confused her emotions curiously. She accused herself of being overbold, and then she noted with horror that she was growing as sensitive to his apparent coldness as if she were really in earnest. She had not supposed that the mere acting of a sentimental role could so obsess her.

To counteract this tendency she a.s.sumed a very professional air when they set out on the following morning. She was once more Eliza Appleton the reporter, and O'Neil, in recognition of this fact, explained rapidly the difficulties of construction which he had met and overcome.

As she began to understand there came to her a fuller appreciation of the man and the work he was doing. Natalie, however, could not seem to grasp the significance of the enterprise. She saw nothing beyond the even gravel road-bed, the uninteresting trestles and bridges and cuts and fills, the like of which she had seen many times before, and her comment was childlike. O'Neil, however, appeared to find her naivete charming, and Eliza reflected bitterly:

"If my nose was perfectly chiseled and my eyebrows nice, he wouldn't care if my brain was the size of a rabbit's. Here am I, talking like a human being and really understanding him, while she sits like a Greek G.o.ddess, wondering if her hat is on straight. If ever I find a girl uglier than I am I'll make her my bosom friend." She jabbed her pencil viciously at her notebook.

The track by this time had been extended considerably beyond the lower crossing--a circ.u.mstance which rendered their boat journey to the glaciers considerably shorter than the one Dan had taken with his cargo of dynamite. When the engine finally stopped it was in the midst of a tent village beside which flowed one of the smaller branches of the Salmon. In the distance the grade stretched out across the level swamps like a thin, lately healed scar, and along its crest gravel-trains were slowly creeping. An army of men like a row of ants were toiling upon it, and still farther away shone the white sides of another encampment.

"Oh! That's Gordon's track," Eliza cried, quickly. "Why, you're nearly up to him. How do you intend to get across?"

O'Neil nodded at the long thin line of moiling men in the distance.

"There's a loose handle in each one of those picks," he said.

"Somebody will be killed in that kind of a racket."

"That rests with Gordon. I'm going through."

"Suppose he had said that when Dan stopped him at the canon?"

"If he'd said it and meant it he'd probably have done it. He bluffs; I don't! I have to go on; he didn't. Now lunch is served; and since this is our last glimpse of civilization, I advise you to fortify yourselves. From here on we shall see nothing but the wilderness."

He led them to a spotless tent which had been newly erected at the edge of the spruce. It was smoothly stretched upon a framework of timber, its walls and floor were of dressed lumber, and within were two cots all in clean linen. There were twin washstands also, and dressers and rocking-chairs, a table and a stove. On the floor beside the beds lay a number of deep, soft bear-rugs. A meal was spread amid gla.s.s and figured china and fresh new napery.

"How cozy! Why, it's a perfect dear of a house!" exclaimed Natalie.

"You will leave everything but your necessaries here, for we are going light," Murray told them. "You will stop here on our way back to Kyak, and I'll warrant you'll be glad to see the place by that time."

"You built this just for us," Eliza said, accusingly.