"And still you won't give up?"

"No."

"I hope you won't have to. But to a man up a tree it looks very much like a dead c.o.c.k in the pit. As I have said, if there is any backing to do, I'm with you, first, last, and all the time, merely from a sportsman's interest in the game. But is there any use in a little handful of us trying to buck up against a whole state government?"

The coffee had been served, and Kent dropped a lump of sugar into his cup.

"Ormsby, I'll never let go while I'm alive enough to fight," he said slowly. "One decent quality I have--and the only one, perhaps: I don't know when I'm beaten. And I'll down this crowd of political plunderers yet, if Bucks doesn't get me sand-bagged."

His listener pushed back his chair.

"If you stood to lose anything more than your job I could understand it,"

he commented. "As it is, I can't. Any way you look at it, your stake in the game isn't worth the time and effort it will take to play the string out. And I happen to know you're ambitious to do things--things that count."

"What is it you don't understand--the motive?"

"That's it."

Kent laughed.

"You are not as astute as Miss Van Brock. She pointed it out to me last night--or thought she did--in two words."

Ormsby's eyes darkened, and he did not affect to misunderstand.

"It would be a grand-stand play," he said half-musingly, "if you should happen to worry it through, I mean. I believe Mrs. Hepzibah would be ready to fall on your neck and forgive you, and turn me down." Then, half-jestingly: "Kent, what will you take to drop this thing permanently and go away?"

David Kent's smile showed his teeth.

"The one thing you wouldn't be willing to give. You asked me once when we had fallen over the fence upon this forbidden ground if I were satisfied, and I told you I wasn't. Do we understand each other?"

"I guess so," said Ormsby. "But--Say, Kent, I like you too well to see you go up against a stone fence blindfolded. I'm like Guilford: I am the man in possession. And possession is nine points of the law."

Kent rose and took the proffered cigar from Ormsby's case.

"It depends a good bit upon how the possession is gained--and held--doesn't it?" he rejoined coolly. "And your figure is unfortunate in its other half. I am going to beat Guilford."

XIII

THE WRECKERS

Just why Receiver Guilford, an officer of the court who was supposed to be nursing an insolvent railroad to the end that its creditors might not lose all, should begin by declaring war on the road's revenue, was a question which the managers of competing lines strove vainly to answer. But when, in defiance of all precedent, he made the cut rates effective to and from all local stations on the Trans-Western, giving the shippers at intermediate and non-compet.i.tive points the full benefit of the reductions, the railroad colony denounced him as a madman and gave him a month in which to find the bottom of a presumably empty treasury.

But the event proved that the major's madness was not altogether without method. It is an axiom in the carrying trade that low rates make business; create it, so to speak, out of nothing. Given an abundant crop, low prices, and high freight rates in the great cereal belt, and, be the farmers never so poor, much of the grain will be stored and held against the chance of better conditions.

So it came about that Major Guilford's relief measure was timed to a nicety, and the blanket cut in rates opened a veritable flood-gate for business in Trans-Western territory. From the day of its announcement the traffic of the road increased by leaps and bounds. Stored grain came out of its hiding places at every country cross-roads to beg for cars; stock feeders drove their market cattle unheard-of distances, across the tracks of competing lines, over and around obstacles of every sort, to pour them into the loading corrals of the Trans-Western.

Nor was the traffic all outgoing. With the easing of the money burden, the merchants in the tributary towns began thriftily to take advantage of the low rates to renew their stocks; long-deferred visits and business trips suddenly became possible; and the saying that it was cheaper to travel than to stay at home gained instant and grateful currency.

In a short time the rolling stock of the road was taxed to its utmost capacity, and the newly appointed purchasing agent was buying cars and locomotives right and left. Also, to keep pace with the ever-increasing procession of trains, a doubled construction force wrought night and day installing new side tracks and pa.s.sing points.

Under the fructifying influence of such a golden shower of prosperity, land values began to rise again, slowly at first, as buyers distrusted the continuance of the golden shower; more rapidly a little later, as the Guilford policy defined itself in terms of apparent permanence.

Towns along the line--hamlets long since fallen into the way-station rut of desuetude--awoke with a start, bestirring themselves joyfully to meet the inspiriting conditions. At Midland City, Stephen Hawk, the new right-of-way agent, ventured to ask munic.i.p.al help to construct a ten-mile branch to Lavabee: it was forthcoming promptly; and the ma.s.s meeting, at which the bond loan was antic.i.p.ated by public subscription shouted itself hoa.r.s.e in enthusiasm.

At Gaston, where Hawk asked for a donation of land whereon the company might build the long-promised division repair-shops, people fought with one another to be first among the donors. And at Juniberg, where the company proposed to establish the first of a series of grain subtreasuries--warehouses in which the farmers of the surrounding country could store their products and borrow money on them from the railroad company at the rate of three per cent, per annum--at Juniberg enough money was subscribed to erect three such depots as the heaviest tributary crop could possibly fill.

It was while the pendulum of prosperity was in full swing that David Kent took a day off from sweating over his problem of ousting the receiver and ran down to Gaston. Single-eyed as he was in the pursuit of justice, he was not unmindful of the six lots standing in his name in the Gaston suburb, and from all accounts the time was come to dispose of them.

He made the journey in daylight, with his eyes wide open and the mental pencil busy at work noting the changes upon which the State press had been dilating daily, but which he was now seeing for the first time. They were incontestable--and wonderful. He admitted the fact without prejudice to a settled conviction that the sun-burst of prosperity was merely another brief period of bubble-blowing. Towns whose streets had been gra.s.s-grown since the day when each in turn had surrendered its right to be called the terminus of the westward-building railroad, were springing into new life.

The song of the circular saw, the bee-boom of the planing-mill and the tapping of hammers were heard in the land, and the wayside hamlets were dotted with new roofs. And Gaston----

But Gaston deserved a separate paragraph in the mental note-book, and Kent accorded it, marveling still more. It was as if the strenuous onrush of the climaxing Year Three had never been interrupted. The material for the new company shops was arriving by trainloads, and an army of men was at work clearing the grounds. On a siding near the station a huge grain elevator was rising. In the streets the hustling activity of the "terminus" period was once more in full swing; and at the Mid-Continent Kent had some little difficulty in securing a room.

He was smoking his after-dinner cigar in the lobby of the hotel and trying as he might to orient himself when Blashfield Hunnicott drifted in. Kent gave the sometime local attorney a cigar, made room for him on the plush-covered settee, and proceeded to pump him dry of Gaston news. Summed up, the inquiries pointed themselves thus: was there any basis for the Gaston revival other than the lately changed att.i.tude of the railroad? In other words, if the cut rates should be withdrawn and the railroad activities cease, would there not be a second and still more disastrous collapse of the Gaston bubble?

Pressed hardly, Hunnicott admitted the probability; given another turn, the screw of inquiry squeezed out an admission of the fact, slurred over by the revivalist, that the railway company's treasury was really the alms-box into which all hands were dipping.

"One more question and I'll let up on you," said Kent. "It used to be said of you in the flush times that you kept tab on the real estate transfers when everybody else was too busy to read the record. Do you still do it?"

Hunnicott laughed uneasily.

"Rather more than ever just now, as you'd imagine."

"It is well. Now you know the members of the old gang, from his Excellency down. Tell me one thing: are they buying or selling?"

Hunnicott sprang up and slapped his leg.

"By Jupiter, Kent! They are selling--every last man of them!"

"Precisely. And when they have sold all they have to sell?"

"They'll turn us loose--drop us--quit booming the town, if your theory is the right one. But say, Kent, I can't believe it, you know. It's too big a thing to be credited to Jim Guilford and his handful of subs in the railroad office. Why, it's all along the line, everywhere."

"I'm telling you that Guilford isn't the man. He is only a cog in the wheel. There is a bigger mind than his behind it."

"I can't help it," Hunnicott protested. "I don't believe that any man or clique could bring this thing about unless we were really on the upturn."

"Very good; believe what you please, but do as I tell you. Sell every foot of Gaston dirt that stands in your name; and while you are about it, sell those six lots for me in Subdivision Five. More than that, do it pretty soon."

Hunnicott promised, in the brokerage affair, at least. Then he switched the talk to the receivership.

"Still up in the air, are you, in the railroad grab case?"

Kent nodded.