The Cross-Cut | Page 6

know? It 's good enough--people should n't ask questions.
Tell nothing more than that--and be careful of your friends. There is
one man to watch--if he is still alive. They call him 'Squint' Rodaine,
and he may or may not still be there. I don't know--I 'm only sure of the
fact that your father hated him, fought him and feared him. The mine
tunnel is two miles up Kentucky Gulch and one hundred yards to the
right. A surveyor can lead you to the very spot. It's been abandoned
now for thirty years. What you 'll find there is more than I can guess.
But, Boy," and his hand clenched tight on Robert Fairchild's shoulder,
"whatever you do, whatever you run into, whatever friends or enemies
you find awaiting you, don't let that light die out of your eyes and don't

pull in that chin! If you find a fight on your hands, whether it's man,
beast or nature, sail into it! If you run into things that cut your very
heart out to learn--beat 'em down and keep going! And win!
There--that's all the advice I know. Meet me at the 11:10 train for
Indianapolis. Good-by."
"Good-by--I 'll be there." Fairchild grasped the pudgy hand and left the
office. For a moment afterward, old Henry Beamish stood thinking and
looking out over the dingy roof adjacent. Then, somewhat absently, he
pressed the ancient electric button for his more ancient stenographer.
"Call a messenger, please," he ordered when she entered, "I want to
send a cablegram."
CHAPTER III
Two weeks later, Robert Fairchild sat in the smoking compartment of
the Overland Limited, looking at the Rocky Mountains in the distance.
In his pocket were a few hundred dollars; in the bank in Indianapolis a
few thousand, representing the final proceeds of the sale of everything
that had connected him with a rather dreary past. Out before him--
The train had left Limon Junction on its last, clattering, rushing leg of
the journey across the plains, tearing on through a barren country of
tumbleweed, of sagebrush, of prairie-dog villages and jagged arroyos
toward the great, crumpled hills in the distance,--hills which meant
everything to Robert Fairchild. Two weeks had created a
metamorphosis in what had been a plodding, matter-of-fact man with
dreams which did not extend beyond his ledgers and his gloomy
home--but now a man leaning his head against the window of a rushing
train, staring ahead toward the Rockies and the rainbow they held for
him. Back to the place where his father had gone with dreams aglow
was the son traveling now,--back into the rumpled mountains where the
blue haze hung low and protecting as though over mysteries and
treasures which awaited one man and one alone. Robert Fairchild
momentarily had forgotten the foreboding omens which, like murky
shadows, had been cast in his path by a beaten, will-broken father. He

only knew that he was young, that he was strong, that he was free from
the drudgery which had sought to claim him forever; he felt only the
surge of excitement that can come with new surroundings, new country,
new life. Out there before him, as the train rattled over culverts
spanning the dry arroyos, or puffed gingerly up the grades toward the
higher levels of the plains, were the hills, gray and brown in the
foreground, blue as the blue sea farther on, then fringing into the
sun-pinked radiance of the snowy range, forming the last barrier against
a turquoise sky. It thrilled Fairchild, it caused his heart to tug and
pull,--nor could he tell exactly why.
Still eighty miles away, the range was sharply outlined to Fairchild,
from the ragged hump of Pikes Peak far to the south, on up to where
the gradual lowering of the mighty upheaval slid away into Wyoming.
Eighty miles, yet they were clear with the clearness that only
altitudinous country can bring; alluring, fascinating, beckoning to him
until his being rebelled against the comparative slowness of the train,
and the minutes passed in a dragging, long-drawn-out sequence that
was almost an agony to Robert Fairchild.
Hours! The hills came closer. Still closer; then, when it seemed that the
train must plunge straight into them, they drew away again, as though
through some optical illusion, and brooded in the background, as the
long, transcontinental train began to bang over the frogs and switches
as it made its entrance into Denver. Fairchild went through the long
chute and to a ticket window of the Union Station.
"When can I get a train for Ohadi?"
The ticket seller smiled. "You can't get one."
"But the map shows that a railroad runs there--"
"Ran there, you mean," chaffed the clerk.
"The best you can do is get to Forks Creek and walk the rest