Читать книгу The King of Arcadia - Lynde Francis - Страница 3

It was shortly after midnight when the "Overland Flyer" made its unscheduled stop behind a freight train which was blocking the track at the blind siding at Coyote. Always a light sleeper, Ballard was aroused by the jar and grind of the sudden brake-clipping; and after lying awake and listening for some time, he got up and dressed and went forward to see what had happened.

The accident was a box-car derailment, caused by a broken truck, and the men of both train crews were at work trying to get the disabled car back upon the steel and the track-blocking train out of the "Flyer's" way. Inasmuch as such problems were acutely in his line, Ballard thought of offering to help; but since there seemed to be no special need, he sat down on the edge of the ditch-cutting to look on.

The night was picture fine; starlit, and with the silent wideness of the great upland plain to give it immensity. The wind, which for the first hundred miles of the westward flight had whistled shrilly in the car ventilators, was now lulled to a whispering zephyr, pungent with the subtle soil essence of the grass-land spring.

Ballard found a cigar and smoked it absently. His eyes followed the toilings of the train crews prying and heaving under the derailed car, with the yellow torch flares to pick them out; but his thoughts were far afield, with his dinner-table companion to beckon them.

"Companion" was the word which fitted her better than any other. Ballard had found few men, and still fewer women, completely companionable. Some one has said that comradeship is the true test of affinity; and the Kentuckian remembered with a keen appreciation of the truth of this saying a summer fortnight spent at the Herbert Lassleys' cottage on the North Shore, with Miss Craigmiles as one of his fellow-guests.

Margaret Lassley had been kind to him on that occasion, holding the reins of chaperonage lightly. There had been sunny afternoons on the breezy headlands, and blood-quickening mornings in Captain Tinkham's schooner-rigged whale-boat, when the white horses were racing across the outer reef and the water was too rough to tempt the other members of the house-party.

He had monopolised Elsa Craigmiles crudely during those two weeks, glorying in her beauty, in her bright mind, in her triumphant physical fitness. He remembered how sturdily their comradeship had grown during the uninterrupted fortnight. He had told her all there was to tell about himself, and in return she had alternately mocked him and pretended to confide in him; the confidences touching such sentimental passages as the devotion of the Toms, the Dicks, and the Harrys of her college years.

Since he had sometimes wished to be sentimental on his own account, Ballard had been a little impatient under these frivolous appeals for sympathy. But there is a certain tonic for growing love even in such bucketings of cold water as the loved one may administer in telling the tale of the predecessor. It is a cold heart, masculine, that will not find warmth in anything short of the ice of indifference; and whatever her faults, Miss Elsa was never indifferent. Ballard recalled how he had groaned under the jesting confidences. Also, he remembered that he had never dared to repel them, choosing rather to clasp the thorns than to relinquish the rose.

From the sentimental journey past to the present stage of the same was but a step; but the present situation was rather perplexingly befogged. Why had Elsa Craigmiles changed her mind so suddenly about spending the summer in Europe? What could have induced her to substitute a summer in Colorado, travelling under Mrs. Van Bryck's wing?

The answer to the queryings summed itself up, for the Kentuckian, in a name – the name of a man and a playwright. He held Mr. Lester Wingfield responsible for the changed plans, and was irritably resentful. In the after-dinner visit with the sight-seeing party in the Pullman there had been straws to indicate the compass-point of the wind. Elsa deferred to Wingfield, as the other women did; only in her case Ballard was sure it meant more. And the playwright, between his posings as a literary oracle, assumed a quiet air of proprietorship in Miss Craigmiles that was maddening.

Ballard recalled this, sitting upon the edge of the ditch-cutting in the heart of the fragrant night, and figuratively punched Mr. Wingfield's head. Fate had been unkind to him, throwing him thus under the wheels of the opportune when the missing of a single train by either the sight-seers or himself would have spared him.

Taking that view of the matter, there was grim comfort in the thought that the mangling could not be greatly prolonged. The two orbits coinciding for the moment would shortly go apart again; doubtless upon the morning's arrival in Denver. It was well. Heretofore he had been asked to sympathise only in a subjective sense. With another lover corporeally present and answering to his name, the torture would become objective – and blankly unendurable.

Notwithstanding, he found himself looking forward with keen desire to one more meeting with the beloved tormentor – to a table exchange of thoughts and speech at the dining-car breakfast which he masterfully resolved not all the playmakers in a mumming world should forestall or interrupt.

This determination was shaping itself in the Kentuckian's brain when, after many futile backings and slack-takings, the ditched car was finally induced to climb the frogs and to drop successfully upon the rails. When the obstructing freight began to move, Ballard flung away the stump of his cigar and climbed the steps of the first open vestibule on the "Flyer," making his way to the rear between the sleeping emigrants in the day-coaches.

Being by this time hopelessly wakeful, he filled his pipe and sought the smoking-compartment of the sleeping-car. It was a measure of his abstraction that he did not remark the unfamiliarity of the place; all other reminders failing, he should have realised that the fat negro porter working his way perspiringly with brush and polish paste through a long line of shoes was not the man to whom he had given his suit-cases in the Council Bluffs terminal.

But thinking pointedly of Elsa Craigmiles, and of the joy of sharing another meal with her in spite of the Lester Wingfields, he saw nothing, noted nothing; and the reverie, now frankly traversing the field of sentiment, ran on unbroken until he became vaguely aware that the train had stopped and started again, and that during the pause there had been sundry clankings and jerkings betokening the cutting off of a car.

A hasty question fired at the fat porter cleared the atmosphere of doubt.

"What station was that we just passed?"

"Short Line Junction, sah; whah we leaves the Denver cyar – yes, sah."

"What? Isn't this the Denver car?"

"No, indeed, sah. Dish yer cyar goes on th'oo to Ogden; yes, sah."

Ballard leaned back again and chuckled in ironic self-derision. He was not without a saving sense of humour. What with midnight prowlings and sentimental reveries he had managed to sever himself most abruptly and effectually from his car, from his hand-baggage, from the prefigured breakfast, with Miss Elsa for his vis-à-vis; and, what was of vastly greater importance, from the chance of a day-long business conference with President Pelham!

"Gardiner, old man, you are a true prophet; it isn't in me to think girl and to play the great game at one and the same moment," he said, flinging a word to the assistant professor of geology across the distance abysses; and the fat porter said: "Sah?"

"I was just asking what time I shall reach Denver, going in by way of the main line and Cheyenne," said Ballard, with cheerful mendacity.

"Erbout six o'clock in the evenin', sah; yes, sah. Huccome you to get lef', Cap'n Boss?"

"I didn't get left; it was the Denver sleeper that got left," laughed the Kentuckian. After which he refilled his pipe, wrote a telegram to Mr. Pelham, and one to the Pullman conductor about his hand-baggage, and resigned himself to the inevitable, hoping that the chapter of accidents had done its utmost.

Unhappily, it had not, as the day forthcoming amply proved. Reaching Cheyenne at late breakfast-time, Ballard found that the Denver train over the connecting line waited for the "Overland" from the West; also, that on this day of all days, the "Overland" was an hour behind her schedule. Hence there was haste-making extraordinary at the end of the Boston-Denver flight. When the delayed Cheyenne train clattered in over the switches, it was an hour past dark. President Pelham was waiting with his automobile to whisk the new chief off to a hurried dinner-table conference at the Brown Palace; and what few explanations and instructions Ballard got were sandwiched between the consommé au gratin and the dessert.

Two items of information were grateful. The Fitzpatrick Brothers, favourably known to Ballard, were the contractors on the work; and Loudon Bromley, who had been his friend and loyal understudy in the technical school, was still the assistant engineer, doing his best to push the construction in the absence of a superior.

Since the chief of any army stands or falls pretty largely by the grace of his subordinates, Ballard was particularly thankful for Bromley. He was little and he was young; he dressed like an exquisite, wore neat little patches of side-whiskers, shot straight, played the violin, and stuffed birds for relaxation. But in spite of these hindrances, or, perhaps, because of some of them, he could handle men like a born captain, and he was a friend whose faithfulness had been proved more than once.

"I shall be only too glad to retain Bromley," said Ballard, when the president told him he might choose his own assistant. And, as time pressed, he asked if there were any other special instructions.

"Nothing specific," was the reply. "Bromley has kept things moving, but they can be made to move faster, and we believe you are the man to set the pace, Mr. Ballard; that's all. And now, if you are ready, we have fifteen minutes in which to catch the Alta Vista train – plenty of time, but none to throw away. I have reserved your sleeper."

It was not until after the returning automobile spin; after Ballard had checked his baggage and had given his recovered suit-cases to the porter of the Alta Vista car; that he learned the significance of the fighting clause in the president's Boston telegram.

They were standing at the steps of the Pullman for the final word; had drawn aside to make room for a large party of still later comers; when the president said, with the air of one who gathers up the unconsidered trifles:

"By the way, Mr. Ballard, you may not find it all plain sailing up yonder. Arcadia Park has been for twenty years a vast cattle-ranch, owned, or rather usurped, by a singular old fellow who is known as the 'King of Arcadia.' Quite naturally, he opposes our plan of turning the park into a well-settled agricultural field, to the detriment of his free cattle range, and he is fighting us."

"In the courts, you mean?"

"In the courts and out of them. I might mention that it was one of his cow-men who killed Sanderson; though that was purely a personal quarrel, I believe. The trouble began with his refusal to sell us a few acres of land and a worthless mining-claim which our reservoir may submerge, and we were obliged to resort to the courts. He is fighting for delay now, and in the meantime he encourages his cow-boys to maintain a sort of guerrilla warfare on the contractors: stealing tools, disabling machinery, and that sort of thing. This was Macpherson's story, and I'm passing it on to you. You are forty miles from the nearest sheriff's office over there; but when you need help, you'll get it. Of course, the company will back you – to the last dollar in the treasury, if necessary."

Ballard's rejoinder was placatory. "It seems a pity to open up the new country with a feud," he said, thinking of his native State and of what these little wars had done for some portions of it. "Can't the old fellow be conciliated in some way?"

"I don't know," replied the president doubtfully. "We want peaceable possession, of course, if we can get it; capital is always on the side of peace. In fact, we authorised Macpherson to buy peace at any price in reason, and we'll give you the same authority. But Macpherson always represented the old cattle king as being unapproachable on that side. On the other hand, we all know what Macpherson was. He had a pretty rough tongue when he was at his best; and he was in bad health for a long time before the derrick fell on him. I dare say he didn't try diplomacy."

"I'll make love to the cow-punching princesses," laughed Ballard; "that is, if there are any."

"There is one, I understand; but I believe she doesn't spend much of her time at home. The old man is a widower, and, apart from his senseless fight on the company, he appears to be – but I won't prejudice you in advance."

"No, don't," said Ballard. "I'll size things up for myself on the ground. I – "

The interruption was the dash of a switch-engine up the yard with another car to be coupled to the waiting mountain line train. Ballard saw the lettering on the medallion: "08".

"Somebody's private hotel?" he remarked.

"Yes. It's Mr. Brice's car, I guess. He was in town to-day."

Ballard was interested at once.

"Mr. Richard Brice? – the general manager of the D. & U. P.?"

The president nodded.

"That's great luck," said Ballard, warmly. "We were classmates in the Institute, and I haven't seen him since he came West. I think I'll ride in the Naught-eight till bedtime."

"Glad you know him," said the president. "Get in a good word for our railroad connection with his line at Alta Vista, while you're about it. There is your signal; good-by, and good luck to you. Don't forget – 'drive' is the word; for every man, minute, and dollar there is in it."

Ballard shook the presidential hand and swung up to the platform of the private car. A reluctant porter admitted him, and thus it came about that he did not see the interior of his own sleeper until long after the other passengers had gone to bed.

"Good load to-night, John?" he said to the porter, when, the private car visit being ended, the man was showing him to his made-down berth.

"Yes, sah; mighty good for de branch. But right smart of dem is ladies, and dey don't he'p de po' portah much."

"Well, I'll pay for one of them, anyway," said the Kentuckian, good-naturedly doubling his tip. "Be sure you rout me out bright and early; I want to get ahead of the crowd."

And he wound his watch and went to bed, serenely unconscious that the hat upon the rail-hook next to his own belonged to Mr. Lester Wingfield; that the hand-bags over which he had stumbled in the dimly lighted aisle were the impedimenta of the ladies Van Bryck; or that the dainty little boots proclaiming the sex – and youth – of his fellow-traveller in the opposite Number Six were the foot-gear of Miss Elsa Craigmiles.