Empire Builders | Page 5

was the brightest of May days when the new supervisor of track
debarked from the mountain-climbing train at Saint's Rest, stretched his
legs gratefully on terra firma, had his first deep lungful of the ozonic
air of the high peaks, and found his welcome awaiting him. Ford would
have no talk of business until he had taken Frisbie across to the little
shack "hotel," and had filled him up on a dinner fresh from the tin; nor,
indeed, afterward, until they were smoking comfortably in the
boxed-off den in the station building which served as the
superintendent's office.
"I've been counting on you, Dick, as you know, ever since this thing
threatened to take shape in my head," Ford began. "First, let me ask
you: do you happen to know where you could lay hands on three or
four good constructing engineers--men you could turn loose absolutely
and trust implicitly? I'm putting this up to you because the Plug
Mountain exile has taken me a bit out of touch."
"Why--yes," said Frisbie, taking time to call the mental roll. "There are
Major Benson and his son Jack--you know 'em both--just in off their
job in the Selkirks. Then there is Roy Brissac; he'd be a pretty good
man in the field; and Chauncey Leckhard, of my class,--he's got a job
in Winnipeg, but he'll come if I ask him to, and he is the best office
man I know. But what on top of earth are you driving at, Stuart?"
Ford cleared his pipe of the ash and refilled it.
"I'll go into the details with you a little later. We shall have plenty of

time during the next month or six weeks, and, incidentally, a good bit
more privacy. The thing I'm trying to figure out will burst like a bubble
if it gets itself made public too soon, and"--lowering his voice--"I can't
trust my office force here. _Savez?_"
"I savez nothing as yet," laughed the new supervisor, "but perhaps I
shall if you'll tell me what is going to happen in the next month or six
weeks."
"I'm coming to that, right now. How would you like to take a hunting
trip over on the wilderness side of the range? There are big woods and
big game."
Frisbie grinned. He was a little man, with sharp black eyes shaded by
the heaviest of black brows, and it was his notion to trim his mustaches
and beard after the fashion set by the third Napoleon and imitated
faithfully by those who sing the part of Mephistopheles in Faust. Hence,
his grin was handsomely diabolic.
"You needn't ask me what I'd like; you just tell me what you want me
to do," he rejoined, with clansman loyalty.
"So I will," said Ford, taking the reins of authority. "We leave here
to-morrow morning for a trip over the Pass and down the Pannikin on
the other side, and if anybody asks you why, you can say that we
expect to kill a deer or two, and possibly a bear. Your part of the
outsetting, however, is to pack your surveying instruments on the burro
saddles so they'll pass for grub-boxes, tent-poles, and the like."
"Call it done," said Frisbie. "But why all this stage play? Can't you
anticipate that much without endangering your bubble?"
Ford lowered his voice again.
"I gave you the hint. Penfield, my chief clerk--his desk is just on the
other side of that partition--is an ex-main-line man, shoved upon me
when I didn't want him. He was General Manager North's stenographer.
For reasons which will be apparent to you a little later on, I want to

blow my bubble in my own way; or, to change the figure, I'd like to fire
the first volley myself."
Frisbie's grin was rather more than less diabolic.
"Then I'd begin by firing Mr. Penfield, himself," he remarked.
"No, you wouldn't," said Ford. "There are going to be obstacles enough
in the way without slapping Mr. North in the face as a preliminary.
Under the circumstances, he'd take it that way; Penfield would make
sure that he took it that way."
It was at this point in the low-toned conference that the ingenious
young man in the outer office put down the desk telephone ear-piece
long enough to smite with his fist at some air-drawn antagonist.
Curiosity was this young man's capital weakness, and he had tinkered
the wires of the private telephone system so that the flicking of a switch
made him an auditor at any conversation carried on in the private office.
He was listening intently and eagerly again when Ford said, still in the
same guarded tone:
"No, I can't fire Penfield, and I don't particularly want to. He is a good
office man, and loyal to his salt: it's