Part 12 (2/2)
The engine and caboose faded in the blur of the blizzard as the break was made in the track. ”Take those bars and divide your men into batches of ten with foremen that can make signs, if they can't talk English,” directed McCloud. ”Work lively now, and throw this track to the south!”
Pretty much everybody--j.a.ps, Italians, and Greeks--understood the game they were playing. McCloud said afterward he would match his Piedmont hundred in making a movable Y against any two hundred experts Glover could pick; they had had the experience, he added, when the move meant their last counter in the game of mountain life or death. The Piedmont ”hundred,” to McCloud's mind, were after that day past masters in the art of track-s.h.i.+fting. Working in a driving cloud of grit and snow, the ignorant, the dull, and the slow rose to the occasion. Bill Dancing, Pat Mears and his foreman, and Stevens moved about in the driving snow like giants. The howling storm rang with the shouting of the foremen, the guttural cries of the j.a.ps, and the clank of the lining-bars as rail-length after rail-length of the heavy track was slued bodily from the grade alignment and swung around in a short curve to a right angle out on the open ground.
McCloud at last gave the awaited signal, and, with keen-eyed, anxious men watching every revolution of the cautious driving-wheels, the engine, hissing and pausing as the air-brakes went off and on, pushed the light caboose slowly out on the rough spur to its extreme end and stopped with the pilot facing the main track at right angles; but before it had reached its halting-place spike-mauls were ringing at the fish-plates where a moment before it had left the line on the curve. The track at that point was cut again, and under a long line of bars and a renewed shouting it was thrown gradually quite across the long gap in the main line, and the new joints in a very rough curve were made fast just as the engine, running now with its pilot ahead, steamed slowly around the new curve and without accident regained the regular grade. It was greeted by a screeching yell as the men climbed into the caboose, for the engine stood safely headed into the teeth of the storm for Piedmont. The ten miles to cover were now a matter of less than thirty minutes, and the construction train drew into the Piedmont yards just as the telegraph wires were heating from headquarters with orders annulling freights, ordering ploughs on outgoing engines, and battening the division hatches for a grapple with a Christmas blizzard.
No man came back better pleased than Stevens. ”That man is all right,”
said he to Mears, nodding his head toward McCloud, as they walked up from the caboose. ”That's all I want to say. Some of these fellows have been a little shy about going out with him; they've hounded me for months about stepping over his way when Sinclair and his mugs struck. I reckon I played my hand about right.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE QUARREL
Spring found the construction of the valley line well advanced, and the grades nearing the lands of the Dunning ranch. Right-of-way men had been working for months with Lance Dunning, over the line, and McCloud had been called frequently into consultation to adjust the surveys to objections raised by d.i.c.ksie's cousin to the crossing of the ranch lands. Even when the proceedings had been closed, a strong current of discontent set from the managing head of the Stone Ranch.
Rumors of Lance Dunning's dissatisfaction often reached the railroad people. Vague talk of an extensive irrigation scheme planned by Sinclair for the Crawling Stone Valley crept into the newspapers, and it was generally understood that Lance Dunning had expressed himself favorably to the enterprise.
d.i.c.ksie gave slight heed to matters as weighty as these. She spent much of her time on horseback, with Jim under the saddle; and in Medicine Bend, where she rode with frequency, Marion's shop became her favorite abiding-place. d.i.c.ksie ordered hats until Marion's conscience rose and she practically refused to supply any more. But the spirited controversy on this point, as on many others--d.i.c.ksie's haughtiness and Marion's restraint, quite unmoved by any show of displeasure--ended always in drawing the two closer to each other.
At home d.i.c.ksie's fancies at that time ran to chickens, and crate after crate of thoroughbreds and clutch after clutch of eggs were brought over the pa.s.s from far-away countries. But the coyotes stole the chickens and kept the hens in such a state of excitement that they could not be got to sit effectively. Nest after nest d.i.c.ksie had the mortification of seeing deserted at critical moments and left to furred prowlers of the foothills and canyons. Once she had managed to shoot a particularly bold coyote, only to be overcome with remorse at seeing its death-struggle. She gained reputation with her cousin and the men, but was ever afterward a.s.sailed with the reflection that the poor fellow might have been providing for a hungry family. Housekeeping cares rested lightly on d.i.c.ksie. Puss had charge of the house, and her mistress concerned herself more with the setting of Jim's shoes than with the dust on the elk heads over the fireplace in the dining-room. Her Medicine Bend horsesh.o.e.r stood in much greater awe of her than Puss did, because if he ever left a mistake on Jim's heels d.i.c.ksie could, and would, point it coldly out.
One March afternoon, coming home from Medicine Bend, she saw at some distance before her a party of men on horseback. She was riding a trail leading from the pa.s.s road that followed the hills, and the party was coming up the bridge road from the lower ranch. d.i.c.ksie had good eyes, and something unusual in the riding of the men was soon apparent to her. Losing and regaining sight of them at different turns in the trail, she made out, as she rode among the trees, that they were cowboys of her own ranch, and riding, under evident excitement, about a strange horseman. She recognized in the escort Stormy Gorman, the ferocious foreman of the ranch, and Denison and Jim Baugh, two of the most reckless of the men. These three carried rifles slung across their pommels, and in front of them rode the stranger.
Fragments of the breakfast-table talk of the morning came back to d.i.c.ksie's mind. The railroad graders were in the valley below the ranch, and she had heard her cousin say a good deal on a point she cared little about, as to where the railroad should cross the Stone Ranch. Approaching the fork of the two roads toward which she and the cowboys were riding, she checked her horse in the shade of a cottonwood tree, and as the party rode up the draw she saw the horseman under surveillance. It was George McCloud.
Unluckily, as she caught a glimpse of him she was conscious that he was looking at her. She bent forward to hide a momentary confusion, spoke briskly to her horse, and rode out of sight. At Marion's she had carefully avoided him. Her precipitancy at their last meeting had seemed, on reflection, unfortunate. She felt that she must have appeared to him shockingly rude, and there was in her recalling of the scene an unconfessed impression that she had been to blame. Often when Marion spoke of him, which she did without the slightest reserve and with no reference as to whether d.i.c.ksie liked it or not, it had been in d.i.c.ksie's mind to bring up the subject of the disagreeable scene, hoping that Marion would suggest a way for making some kind of unembarra.s.sing amends. But such opportunities had slipped away unimproved, and here was the new railroad superintendent, whom their bluff neighbor Sinclair never referred to other than as the college guy, being brought apparently as a prisoner to the Stone Ranch.
Busied with her thoughts, d.i.c.ksie rode slowly along the upper trails until a long _detour_ brought her around the corrals and in at the back of the house. Throwing her lines to the ground, she alighted and through the back porch door made her way un.o.bserved to her room. From the office across the big hall she heard men's voices in dispute, and she slipped into the dining-room, where she could hear and might see without being seen. The office was filled with cowboys. Lance Dunning, standing with a cigar in his hand and one leg thrown over a corner of the table, was facing McCloud, who stood before him with his hand on a chair. Lance was speaking as d.i.c.ksie looked into the room, and in curt tones: ”My men were acting under my orders.”
”You have no right to give such orders,” McCloud said distinctly, ”nor to detain me, nor to obstruct our free pa.s.sage along the right of way you have agreed to convey to us under our survey.”
”d.a.m.n your survey! I never had a plat of any such survey. I don't recognize any such survey. And if your right-of-way men had ever said a word about crossing the creek above the flume I never would have given you a right of way at all.”
”There were never but two lines run below the creek; after you raised objection I ran them both, and both were above the flume.”
”Well, you can't put a grade there. I and some of my neighbors are going to dam up that basin, and the irrigation laws will protect our rights.”
”I certainly can't put a grade in below the flume, and you refuse to talk about our crossing above it.”
”I certainly do.”
”Why not let us cross where we are, and run a new level for your ditch that will put the flume higher up?”
”You will have to cross below the flume where it stands, or you won't cross the ranch at all.”
McCloud was silent for a moment. ”I am using a supported grade there for eight miles to get over the hill within a three-tenths limit. I can't drop back there. We might as well not build at all if we can't hold our grade, whereas it would be very simple to run a new line for your ditch, and my engineers will do it for you without a dollar of expense to you, Mr. Dunning.”
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