Empire Builders | Page 7

an active opponent behind you instead of a passive one."
"I guess you're right, Dick; but I'll have to be governed by conditions as I find them. Aside from North's influence with Mr. Colbrith, which is considerable, I believe, he can't do much to help. But he can do a tremendous lot to hinder. I think I shall try to choke him with butter, if I can."
Notwithstanding the general manager's letter, Ford took the train for Denver the following morning, and the chief clerk remarked that he checked a small steamer trunk in addition to his hand baggage.
"Going to be gone some time, Mr. Ford?" he asked, when he brought the night mail down for the superintendent to look over.
"Yes," said Ford absently.
"You'll let me know where to reach you from time to time, I suppose?" ventured Penfield.
Ford looked up quickly.
"It won't be necessary. You can handle the office work, as you have heretofore, and Mr. Frisbie will have full charge out of doors."
Penfield looked a little crestfallen.
"Am I to take orders from Mr. Frisbie?" he asked, as one determined to know the worst.
"Just the same as you would from me," said the superintendent, swinging up to the step of the moving car. And the chief clerk went back to his office busily concocting another cipher message to the general manager.
On the way down the canyon Ford was saying to himself that he was now fairly committed to the scheme over which he had spent so many toilful days and sleepless nights, and that he would have it out with Mr. North to a fighting conclusion before he slept.
But a freight wreck got in the way while the down passenger train was measuring the final third of the distance, and it was long after office hours in the Pacific Southwestern headquarters when Ford reached Denver.
By consequence, the crucial interview with the general manager had to be postponed; and the enthusiast was chafing at his ill luck when he went to his hotel--chafing and saying hard words, for the waiting had been long, and now that the psychologic moment had arrived, delays were intolerable.
Now it sometimes happens that seeming misfortunes are only blessings in disguise. When Ford entered the hotel caf�� to eat his belated dinner, he saw Evans, the P. S-W. auditor, sitting alone at a table-for-two. He crossed the room quickly and shook hands with the man he had meant to interview either before or after the meeting with North.
It was after they had chatted comfortably through to the coffee that the auditor said, blandly: "What are you down for, Ford?--anything special?"
"Yes. I am down to get leave of absence to go East," said Ford warily.
"But that isn't all," was the quiet rejoinder. "In fact, it's only the non-committal item that you'd give to a Rocky Mountain News reporter."
Ford was impatient of diplomatic methods when there was no occasion for them.
"Give it a name," he said bluntly. "What do you think you know, Evans?"
The auditor smiled.
"There is a leak in your office up at Saint's Rest, I'm afraid. What sort of a bombshell are you fixing to fire at Mr. North?"
Ford grew interested at once.
"Tell me what you know, and perhaps I can piece it out for you."
"I'll tell you what Mr. North knows--which will be more to the purpose, perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the original S. L & W. preliminaries and rights-of-way on its proposed extension."
Ford's eyes narrowed. He was thinking of the warning letter he would have to write to Frisbie. But what he said was:
"I'd like to know how the dickens you guessed all that. But no matter; supposing I did?"
"It's no good," said the auditor, shaking his head. "I'm talking as a friend. North doesn't like you, personally; and if he did, you couldn't persuade him to recommend anything in the way of an experiment on the Plug Mountain. So far from extending your two-by-four branch--if that is what you have in mind--he'd be much more likely to counsel its abandonment, if the charter didn't require us to keep it going."
Ford found a cigar for the auditor, and lighted one for himself.
"From all of which I infer that the semiannual report of the Pacific Southwestern is going to be a pretty bad one," he said, with carefully assumed indifference.
Evans regarded him shrewdly.
"Are you guessing at that? Or is there a leak at our end of the line as well as at yours?"
"Oh, it's a guess," laughed Ford. "Call it that, anyhow. At least, I haven't any of your confidential clerks