Part 11 (2/2)
The station with its two one-car trains, and the shacks of the little mining-camp beyond, lay s.h.i.+mmering ghost-like in the new-born light of the moon. The engine of the sheriff's car was humming softly with a note like the distant swarming of bees, and from the dancehall in Argentine the snort of a trombone and the tinkling clang of a cracked piano floated out upon the frosty night air.
Winton turned to go back. The windows of the Rosemary were all dark, and there was nothing to stay for. So he thought, at all events; but if he had not been musing abstractedly upon things widely separated from his present surroundings, he might have remarked two tiny stars of lantern-light high on the placer ground above the embankment; or, failing the sight, he might have heard the dull, measured _slumph_ of a churn-drill burrowing deep in the frozen earth of the slope.
As it was, a pair of brown eyes blinded him, and the tones of a voice sweeter than the songs of Oberon's sea-maid filled his ears. Wherefore he neither saw nor heard; and taking the short cut across the mouth of the lateral gulch back to camp, he boarded the d.i.n.key and went to bed without disturbing Adams.
The morning of the day to come broke clear and still, with the stars paling one by one at the pointing finger of the dawn, and the frost-rime lying thick and white like a snowfall of erect and glittering needles on iron and steel and wood.
Obedient to orders, the bridge-builders were getting out their hand-car at the construction camp, the wheels shrilling merrily on the frosted rails, and the men stamping and swinging their arms to start the sluggish night-blood. Suddenly, like the opening gun of a battle, the dull rumble of a mighty explosion trembled upon the still air, followed instantly by a sound as of a pa.s.sing avalanche.
Winton was out and running up the track before the camp was fairly aroused. What he saw when he gained the hither side of the lateral gulch was a sight to make a strong man weep. A huge landslide, starting from the frozen placer ground high up on the western promontory, had swept every vestige of track and embankment into the deep bed of the creek at a point precisely opposite Mr. Somerville Darrah's private car.
VII. THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW
Virginia was up and dressed when the sullen shock of the explosion set the windows jarring in the Rosemary.
She hurried out upon the observation platform and so came to look upon the ruin wrought by the landslide while the dust-like smoke of the dynamite still hung in the air.
”Rather unlucky for our friends the enemy,” said a colorless voice behind her; and she had an uncomfortable feeling that Jastrow had been lying in wait for her.
She turned upon him quickly.
”Was it an accident, Mr. Jastrow?”
”How could it be anything else?” he inquired mildly.
”I don't know. But there was an explosion: I heard it.”
”It is horribly unfair,” she went on. ”I understand the sheriff is here. Couldn't he have prevented this?”
The secretary's rejoinder was a plat.i.tude: ”Everything is fair in love or war.”
”But this is neither,” she retorted.
”Think not?” he said coolly. ”Wait, and you'll see. And a word in your ear, Miss Carteret: you are one of us, you know, and you mustn't be disloyal. I know what you did yesterday after you read those telegrams.”
Virginia's face became suddenly wooden. Until that moment it had not occurred to her that Jastrow's motive in showing her the two telegrams might have been carefully calculated.
”I have never given you the right to speak to me that way, Mr.
Jastrow,” she said, with the faintest possible emphasis on the courtesy prefix; and with that she turned from him to focus her field-gla.s.s on the construction camp below.
At the Utah stronghold all was activity of the fiercest. Winton had raced back with his news of the catastrophe, and the camp was alive with men cl.u.s.tering like bees and swarming upon the flat-cars of the material-train to be taken to the front.
While she looked, studiously ignoring the man behind her, Virginia saw the big octopod engine clamoring up the grade. In a twinkling the men were off and at work.
Virginia's color rose and the brown eyes filled swiftly. One part of her ideal was courage of the sort that rises the higher for reverses. But at the instant she remembered the secretary, and, lest he should spy upon her emotion, she turned and took refuge in the car.
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