The Forbidden Way

Twenty miles of rails! They seemed very little in the face of what he had already accomplished. He had not counted on this, and had laid no alternative plans. The Denver and California people were powerless to help him. A subtle influence was at work among the steel companies, and, so far as Jeff could see, it would take him from three to five months to get his rails from the West or East. In the meanwhile what might his enemies not accomplish in bringing about his downfall. What would become of his pledges to the settlers on the Hermosa Estate – and the lot-holders of Saguache, many of whose houses were only half built while they waited for the material to complete them? These people were already impatient, and in a short while, unless something could be done to open connections, the storm must break.

Some days before, by request, Jeff had met Cortland Bent in Denver. He was glad to learn that at last the Amalgamated had decided to come out into the open and kept the appointment, wondering why the General had chosen Cortland as his emissary. He had entered the offices of the Chicago and Utah with his usual air of self-confidence, frankly curious as to what part Cort could be expected to play in such a big game. It did not take him long to learn. They had not been talking more than a few moments before Jeff discovered that General Bent had made no mistake. The bored, abstracted air of the gilded youth, the mannerisms which Jeff had been accustomed to associate with Cortland Bent, were for some reason lacking. In the short time since they had last met a change of some sort had come over his old acquaintance. He conveyed an impression of spareness and maturity, as though in a night he had melted off all superfluities of flesh and spirit. His eyes now seemed to be more deeply set, their gaze, formerly rather deliberate, now penetrating, almost to a degree of shrewdness. He was no longer the boy who had been a failure. He was now the man who had tasted the bitterness of success.

"I thought we might make one more effort for peace, Wray. That's why I'm here. I'm fully informed as to the affairs of the Amalgamated Reduction Company and as to my father's previous conversations with you. I'm authorized to talk over your interests in the Valley. We thought before carrying out all our plans you might like to have a chance to reconsider."

"That's pretty clever of you, Bent. I'm ready to talk business – any time. Fire away!"

"I will. By this time you have probably formed some sort of an idea of the kind of a proposition you're up against. I'm not making any pretence of friendship when I warn you that you're going to lose out in the end. My instructions are to ask you to come in with us now. Later perhaps you couldn't do it so advantageously."

"H – m! I'm figuring my chances are getting better every minute, Bent." He paused and then added, smiling, "How would your crowd like to come in with me? I've got a good thing – a very good thing. And I wouldn't mind selling a small block at a good figure. It seems a pity to cut each other's throats, don't it? They'll be building houses of gold-bricks out here next year, and you and I will pay the bill – while we might be putting a snug profit into our pockets."

Bent remembered another bluff of Wray's which had been expensive, so he only laughed.

"You once froze me out with a pair of deuces, Wray, but I'm holding cards this hand," he finished quietly.

"I haven't such a bad hand, Bent," drawled Jeff, shaking some Durham into a paper. "Even 'fours' wouldn't scare me." He put the drawing string of his tobacco-bag in his teeth and closed the bag viciously. "See here – we're wasting time. What are your offers? If they're not better than your father's were, it's not worth while talking."

"Better than my father's?" Cortland couldn't restrain a gasp of admiration. "Why, Wray, your property isn't worth what it was."

"Why not?" savagely.

"Well, for one thing," said Cortland coolly, "your railroad connections are not what they might be. I might add to that, there's no assurance they're going to be improved."

"Not unless I give it to you. Trains are scheduled to run on the Saguache Short Line on the twenty-fifth of May."

"They're not going to run, Wray." Jeff turned on him quickly, but Cortland's eyes met his eagerly. "That's true," he added. "Believe it or not, as you choose."

Jeff's sharp glance blurred quickly. Then he smiled and looked out of the window with his childish stare.

"Oh, well," he said quietly, "we'll do the best we can."

"You'd better take my advice and come in with, us now. We'll meet you in a fair spirit – "

"Why?" asked Jeff suddenly. "Why should you meet me in any kind of spirit. You've got things all your own way – at the upper end of the Valley – now you say you've coppered my outlet at Pueblo."

"Yes, that's true. But there are other reasons why we prefer to go no farther without an effort to come to terms. We're frank in admitting that when we can accomplish anything by compromise we prefer to do it. This fight has been expensive. It promises to be more expensive. But, no matter what your reasons, ours are greater, and no matter what move you make, the Amalgamated can check you. The Amalgamated will win in the end. It always has. It always will. You've only to look at its history – "

"Oh, I know its history," said Wray. "It's a history of organized crime in three states. You've had a succession of easy marks – of sure things. I'm another one. You've got a sure thing. Why don't you go ahead and play it. Why do you want to talk about it? I wouldn't in your place. I'd clean you out and hang your bones up the way you did Conrad Seemuller's, for the crows to roost on." Wray leaned forward and brought his fist down on the table. "I know what your 'fair spirit' means, Cort Bent. It means that your 'sure thing' is a 'selling plater'; that you've played your best cards and the tricks are still in my hand."

Cortland Bent's shoulders moved almost imperceptibly.

"You're mistaken," he said shortly.

"Well, you'll have to prove it. I lived for some years in Missouri."

"Then you won't consider any basis for settlement?"

"There's nothing to settle. You started this fight. Now finish it. Either your father wins – or I do. He wouldn't consider my figures in New York. He'd be less likely to consider them now. They've gone up since then."

Cortland rose and walked to the window.

"I warn you that you're making a mistake. This is neither a bluff nor a threat. I mean what I say. You're going to lose. You've been hampered by lack of railroad facilities. How do you like it? Your own mines have kept your plant busy, but you can't buy any ore and you can't compete with us. You'll never be able to."

"I'll take my chances."

"Then this is final?"

"Yes." And, as Cortland Bent rose and took up his hat, "You go back to those that sent you here and say that on the twenty-fifth of May the Saguache Smelting Company will be in the market for ore. I've never competed with your company. I've always been content to take my profit at the current prices. But if it's necessary to be a hog to remain in this business, I'll be the biggest hog now or get out of it. You tell your people that in future I'll regulate my schedule to theirs, and whatever the prices of the Amalgamated are, my prices will be better. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly. I'm much obliged. Good morning."

The interview had terminated rather suddenly – almost too suddenly to be entirely satisfactory to Jeff, who had at first seen in a talk with Cortland Bent an opportunity to learn by inductive methods something of the future plans of his enemies. He realized, as he watched Bent's squared shoulders disappear through the door of an inner office, that in this respect he had been entirely unsuccessful. Bent had revealed nothing that Jeff did not know before. Jeff had a feeling, too, that Bent had retired with a slight advantage, even though it had been moral rather than tactical. Throughout the interview Bent had preserved the same demeanor of quiet confidence, of repression and solidity, which, in spite of his advances, had more than offset Jeff's violence and distemper. What had come over the man? Had he found himself at last?

In his heart Jeff had always had a feeling of good-humored contempt for the men of Cortland Bent's class, and the fact that Camilla preferred this one to him had made him less tolerant of them even than before. He was unwilling to acknowledge to himself the slight sense of shock he had experienced in discovering that Cort Bent was now a foeman worthy of his own metal. Their trails were crossing too often. It wasn't healthy for either of them.

He understood now why it was that Camilla had written him vaguely of an urgent matter about which she could not write, requesting permission to come West at once. He had put it down to the whim of a woman – as he did everything feminine he could not understand. It was all clear to him now. She wanted to be near Cortland Bent and feared to take any definite step which might compromise her in the eyes of her husband. He had had some misgivings about her letters – they had seemed so frank, so womanly and friendly, with a touch of regretful tenderness in them that was unlike anything Jeff could remember when they had been together. But he was glad now that he had refused her. Seeing Bent had brought back into Jeff's mind the whole sad history of their mistaken marriage. There wasn't a day when he didn't miss her, and his business worries were never so thick about him that her image didn't intrude. Frequently he found himself thinking and planning, as he used to plan, for Camilla; only to remember bitterly in time that the battle he was fighting was only for himself. And now the man she loved had come down to help the legions of autocracy against him. He was glad of that. It would nerve him for the struggle. He could fight better with Cort Bent on the other side.

With an effort he put the thought of Camilla from his mind and went about his other business with a new determination to circumvent his foes. He always fought better when his back was to the wall, and his conversation with Bent had confirmed the necessity of completing the Short Line at any cost.

The drains upon his resources had been enormous. Three million dollars had already been spent, and there was another million still to be provided for. His expenses had been greater because of the unusual impediments thrown in his way. The mine was paying "big," and the railroad and the banks were still backing him, but he knew that there was a limit to the amounts he must expect from these quarters. He had tried to buy rails in the open market and found that his enemies had forestalled him. The mills agreed to take his orders, but during the press of business refused to name a definite date for delivery. General Bent, whose friendship was necessary to the steel interests East and West, had seen to that. But if the Amalgamated thought that the lack of rails was going to stop the construction of the Short Line, they were going to have another guess.

Already an alternative plan had suggested itself to Wray, a desperate, unheard-of plan which he could never have thought of except as a last resort. But the more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that it was the only solution of his problem. He would tear up the rails of the old narrow-gauge which ran from Mesa City up to the old coal field at Trappe. They were light rails, old and rusty from disuse, but they were rails, and by the use of more ties and "blue-boards" for the time would serve his purpose. With the sidings and a reserve supply of the D. & S. at Saguache, he managed to figure out enough to finish the Short Line. He knew his engineers wouldn't approve – they couldn't approve, he knew, on any grounds but those of expediency, for such construction was dangerous and would make the accomplishment of any kind of a fast schedule impossible, but they would give him his connection – without which all of his plans must fall to earth. By October, or perhaps by late summer, he would manage to get standard rails somewhere. It would be easier once the road was in operation. He couldn't help smiling when he went into the office of the Denver and California. If this was the last card Bent's crowd could play, it was on the tallies that they were to lose the game.

His plans met with the approval of his friends, and Jeff went back to Mesa City with a lighter heart than when he had left it. A hurried conference with his engineers and directors, which exhausted some of Jeff's strength and most of his patience, and the old road was doomed to destruction. Nor was Jeff satisfied until three dilapidated flat cars loaded with Mexicans and tools were started over the line to the coal fields. Then he turned with a sigh under the "Watch Us Grow" sign and went into his private office, where an accumulation of mining business awaited him.

But his sense of triumph was short-lived. The week had not ended before advices of a disquieting nature reached him from Denver and Pueblo of a considerable activity in the stock of the Denver and California. This information in itself was not surprising, for during the past year the rate-war and the unsettled condition of the country had made the stock of the road particularly vulnerable to manipulation? But back of this movement, Symonds, the General Manager of the road, one of Wray's staunchest supporters, thought he detected powerful influences. Rumors of a more startling character had transpired, signifying the transfer of large blocks of the stock to Eastern investors which seriously threatened the control of those in power. Other men, men of the directorate, Jeff discovered, also showed signs of apprehension. A reorganization of the road might mean anything – to Jeff it meant ruin, if the new stockholders were in any way identified with the Chicago and Utah. Was this Bent's crowd? For the first time Wray really appreciated the lengths to which his enemies were prepared to go to accomplish his downfall. He knew that they had already spent large sums and had used all their influence in completing their control of the Denver and Western, but a control of the Denver and California! It was simply incredible!

Letters from the banks were still more disquieting. Conditions, they wrote, were so unsatisfactory throughout the West that their boards of directors had thought it advisable to call their loans on the stock of the Denver and Saguache Railroad Company. The uncertainty of the development of the Saguache Company's properties, owing to the imperfection of their railroad connections, made this course necessary until they secured definite and satisfactory assurances as to the completion of the Saguache Short Line and the value of its contracts with the Denver and California Railroad Company. The receipt of these letters in the same mail was a coincidence which showed Jeff that, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, his friends were weakening under fire and that the enemy had invaded his own country. They meant, in short, that unless he could meet the loans at once – eight hundred thousand dollars on stock really worth two millions and a half – those securities would fall into the hands of the Amalgamated people.

Eight hundred thousand dollars! It seemed a prodigious sum of money now. The "Lone Tree" would bring that in the open market – of course, but he and Pete could not sell the "Lone Tree." It was the backbone of his entire financial position! Really alarmed at the sudden disastrous turn the company's affairs had taken, he called a meeting of Mulrennan, Larry Berkely, Weigel, Willoughby, and other available directors, and then hurried to Denver to see his friends in the D. & C.

Other disappointments awaited him there. Symonds, and Shackelton, the vice-president, advised him for the sake of his head, as well, perhaps, as for their own, to compromise with his enemies if he could. Until more light was shed as to the new ownership of the D. & C. they could make him no further promises of assistance either moral or financial. He argued with them, pleaded with them at least for some pledge on the part of the road with which he could reassure the banks. They were powerless, they said. Their contracts, of course, would be a basis for a suit even under a new management. They could – or would do nothing more.

A suit? Jeff knew what that meant – interminable legal proceedings, while the ties of the Saguache Short Line rotted under the rails, and washouts in the summer tore the roadbed to pieces; it meant the shutting down of his coal mines, the abandonment of his lumber camps, the complete isolation of his mines and smelter, which, if they did business at all, must do it under all kinds of disadvantages.

There was only one thing left to do, and that was to finish the Short Line and put it into operation. Then, perhaps, the courts would uphold him and force the D. & C. to live up to its contracts – no matter who was in control. But how was he to redeem the eight hundred thousand in stock? He had enough available capital to finish the Short Line, but not enough to redeem the stock, too. He got on the Denver and Western sleeper for Kinney that night, sore in mind and body. He was too tired even to think. Larry and Pete must help him now. Perhaps there was some way. He fell into a troubled sleep, and about his ears Cornelius Bent's railroad mocked at him in noisy triumph.

The arrival of the morning train from Saguache was an event in Mesa City. There were but two trains a day, and it was the morning train which brought the mail and yesterday's newspapers from Denver. For obvious reasons, the passenger traffic was small, and, as almost every member of the Saguache community was personally known to almost every citizen of Mesa City, the greetings as a rule were short and laconic, consisting of a rustic nod or the mere mention of a surname. Most of the travelers were men and descended from the combination baggage-smoker; but this morning Bill Wilkinson, the conductor (and brakeman), a person by nature taciturn, appeared upon the platform of the rear coach bearing a lady's English traveling bag, and winked, actually winked, at Ike Matthews, the station master, who was waiting for his envelope from headquarters. At least eight people saw that wink and fully eighteen the handbag, and, when a pretty lady in a dove-gray traveling suit appeared in the car doorway to be helped down ceremoniously to the station platform, thirty-six eyes were agog and thirty-six ears were open to learn the meaning of the unusual occurrence; for it was plainly to be seen that the visitor bore every mark of consequence and came from the East – surely from Denver – possibly from Chicago.

They saw her smile her thanks to Wilkinson, but when she looked rather helplessly about her and asked for a "coupé" or "station wagon" a snigger, immediately suppressed, arose from the younger persons in the audience. The firm hand of Ike Matthews now took control of the situation.

"Do you want the hotel, ma'am?" he said.

"Yes, I think so," said the lady. "But first I want to find Mr. Jeff Wray. Can you tell me where I can see him?"

Her eyes searched the cottonwood trees along the creek opposite the station, as though she hoped to find him there, searching in the wrong direction for the town which had been described to her.

"Yes, ma'am, if you'll come with me." Ike took up the bag and led the way around the corner of the building into Main Street, while the engineer and fireman hung out of their cab and with the crowd on the platform followed the slim figure with their eyes until it vanished into the crowd at the post-office.

A clerk in the outer room of the Development Company's office building received the queer pair.

"Mr. Wray is in, ma'am, but he's very busy." He looked at her timidly. "I don't know whether he'll see you or not. Who shall I say?"

The lady handed him a card, and, as he disappeared, she fingered in her pocketbook for change – then, after a glance at the station master, smiled at him instead.

"I'm much obliged to you," she said gratefully. "I think I'll stay here now. I'll find my way to the hotel."

Matthews put the bag on a desk, awkwardly removed his hat and departed, while the lady sat and waited.

In the inner office, his head in his hands, his elbows on his desk, his brows bent over some papers, sat Jeff, trying to bring cosmos out of the chaos of his affairs. His clerk entered, the card in his hand, wondering whether he had made a mistake. Hell had been let loose in the Development Company for a week, and Mr. Wray, he knew, was in no humor for interruptions. Jeff looked up with a frown.

"Well – what is it?"

"A lady – to see you."

Jeff's head sank into his papers again.

"Tell her I'm busy!" Then he looked up irritably. "What lady? Who is she? I can't see anybody to-day."

"I don't know. She doesn't belong around here." And he dropped the card on the desk.

Jeff picked it up and looked at it with a scowl, then started in amazement. What did it mean? He rose slowly, his brows perplexed, and put on his coat.

"Tell her to come in," he said. He was still standing in the middle of the room looking at her card when Mrs. Cheyne entered.