But this time the brown eyes flashed and her breath came quickly as she read the vice-president's cold-blooded after-thought:

"Town-Marshal Biggin will arrive in Carbonate on Number 201 this A.M. with a prisoner. Have our attorneys see to it that the man is promptly jailed in default of bond. If he is set at liberty, as he is likely to be, I shall trust you to arrange for his rearrest and detention at all hazards.

"D."

V. THE LANDSLIDE

Virginia took the first step in the perilous path of the strategist when she handed the incendiary telegram back to Jastrow.

"Poor Mr. Winton!" she said, with the real sympathy in the words made most obviously perfunctory by the tone. "What a world of possibilities there is masquerading behind that little word 'arrange.' Tell me more about it, Mr. Jastrow. How will they 'arrange' it?"

"Winton's rearrest? Nothing easier in a tough mining-camp like Carbonate, I should say."

"Yes, but how?"

"I can't prophesy how Grafton will go about it, but I know what I should do."

Virginia's smile was irresistible, but there was a look in the deepest depth of the brown eyes that was sifting Mr. Arthur Jastrow to the innermost sand-heap of his desert nature.

"How would you do it, Mr. Napoleon Jastrow?" she asked, giving him the exact fillip on the side of gratified vanity.

"Oh, I'd fix him. He is in a frame of mind right now; and by the time the lawyers are through drilling him in the trespa.s.s affair, he'll be just spoiling for a row with somebody."

"Do you think so? Oh, how delicious! And then what?"

"Then I'd hire some plug-ugly to stumble up against him and pick a quarrel with him. He'd do the rest--and land in the lock-up."

Those who knew her best said it was a warning to be heeded in Miss Virginia Carteret when her eyes were downcast and her voice sank to its softest cadence.

"Why, certainly; how simple!" she said, taking her cousin's arm again; and the secretary went in to set the wires at work in Winton's affair.

Now Miss Carteret was a woman in every fiber of her, but among her gifts she might have counted some that were, to say the least, super-feminine. One of these was a measure of discretion which would have been fairly creditable in a past master of diplomacy. So, while the sympathetic part of her was crying out for a chance to talk Winton's threatened danger over with some one, she lent herself outwardly to the Reverend Billy's mood--which was one of scenic enthusiasm; this without prejudice to a growing determination to intervene in behalf of fair play for Winton if she could find a way.

But the way obstinately refused to discover itself. The simple thing to do would be to appeal to her uncle's sense of justice. It was not like him to fight with ign.o.ble weapons, she thought, and a tactful word in season might make him recall the order to the superintendent.

But she could not make the appeal without betraying Jastrow. She knew well enough that the secretary had no right to show her the telegrams; knew also that Mr. Somerville Darrah's first word would be a demand to know how she had learned the company's business secrets. Regarding Jastrow as little as a high-bred young woman to whom sentiment is as the breath of life can regard a man who is quite devoid of it, she was still far enough from the thought of effacing him.

To this expedient there was an unhopeful alternative: namely, the sending, by the Reverend Billy, or, in the last resort, by herself, of a warning message to Winton. But there were obstacles seemingly insuperable. She had not the faintest notion of how such a warning should be addressed; and again, the operator at Argentine was a Colorado and Grand River employee, doubtless loyal to his salt, in which case the warning message would never get beyond his waste-basket.

"Getting too chilly for you out here? Want to go in?" asked the Reverend Billy, when the scenic enthusiasm began to outwear itself.

"No; but I am tired of the sentry-go part of it--ten steps and a turn," she confessed. "Can't we walk on the track a little way?"

Calvert saw no reason why they might not, and accordingly helped her over to the snow-encrusted path between the rails.

"We can trot down and have a look at their construction camp, if you like," he suggested, and thitherward they went.

There was not much to see, after all, as the Reverend Billy remarked when they had reached a coign of vantage below the curve. A string of use-worn bunk cars; a "d.i.n.key" caboose serving as the home on wheels of the chief of construction and his a.s.sistant; a crooked siding with a gang of dark-skinned laborers at work unloading a car of steel.

These in the immediate foreground; and a little way apart, perched high enough on the steep slope of the mountain side to be out of the camp turmoil, a small structure, half plank and half canvas--to wit, the end-of-track telegraph office.

It was Virginia who first marked the boxed-up tent standing on the slope.

"What do you suppose that little house-tent is for?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Calvert. Then he saw the wires and ventured a guess which hit the mark.

"I didn't suppose they would have a telegraph office," she commented, with hope rising again.

"Oh, yes; they'd have to have a wire--one of their own. Under the circ.u.mstances they could hardly use ours."

"No," she rejoined absently. She was scanning the group of steel-handlers in the hope that a young man in a billy-c.o.c.k hat and with a cigarette between his lips would shortly reveal himself. She found him after a time and turned quickly to her cousin.

"There is Mr. Adams down by the engine. Do you think he would come over and speak to us if he knew we were here?"

The Reverend Billy's smile was of honest admiration.

"How could you doubt it? Wait here a minute and I'll call him for you."

He was gone before she could reply--across the ice-bridge spanning one of the pools, and up the rough, frozen embankment of the new line.

There were armed guards here, too, as well as at the front, and one of them halted him at the picket line. But Adams saw and recognized him, and presently the two were crossing to where Virginia stood waiting for them.

"Eheu! what a little world we live in, Miss Virginia! Who would have thought of meeting you here?" said Adams, taking her hand at the precise elevation prescribed by good form--Boston good form.

"The shock is mutual," she laughed. "I must say that you and Mr.

Winton have chosen a highly unconventional environment for your sketching-field."

"I'm down," he admitted cheerfully; "please don't trample on me. But really, it wasn't all fib. Jack does do things with a pencil--other things besides maps and working profiles, I mean. Won't you come over and let me do the honors of the studio?"--with a grandiloquent arm-sweep meant to include the construction camp in general and the "d.i.n.key" caboose-car in particular.

It was the invitation she would have angled for, but she was too wise to a.s.sent too readily.

"Oh, no; I think we mustn't. I'm afraid Mr. Winton might not like it."

"Not like it? If you'll come he'll never forgive himself for not being here to 'shoot up' the camp for you in person. He is away, you know; gone to Carbonate for the day."

"Ought we to go, Cousin Billy?" she asked, shifting, not the decision, but the responsibility for it, to broader shoulders.

"Why not, if you care to?" said the athlete, to whom right-of-way fights were mere matters of business in no wise conflicting with the social ameliorations.

Virginia hesitated. There was a thing to be said to Mr. Adams, and that without delay; but how could she say it with her cousin standing by to make an impossible trio out of any attempted duet confidential?

A willingness to see that Winton had fair play need not carry with it an open desertion to the enemy. She must not forget to be loyal to her salt; and, besides, Mr. Somerville Darrah's righteous indignation was a possibility not lightly to be ignored.

But, the upshot of the hesitant pause was a decision to brave the consequences--all of them; so she took Calvert's arm for the slippery crossing of the ice-bridge.

Once on his own domain, Adams did the honors of the camp as thoroughly and conscientiously as if the hour held no care heavier than the entertainment of Miss Virginia Carteret. He explained the system under which the material was kept moving forward to the ever-advancing front; let her watch the rhythmic swing and slide of the rails from the car to the benches; took her up into the cab of the big "octopod"

locomotive; gave her a chance to peep into the camp kitchen car; and concluded by handing her up the steps of the "d.i.n.key."