XIX

THE CHALLENGE

Lidgerwood was unpleasantly surprised to find that the president's daughter knew the man whom her father had tersely characterized as "a born gentleman and a born buccaneer," but the fact remained. When he came with Flemister into the circle of light cast by the smaller of the two fires, Miss Brewster not only welcomed the mine-owner; she immediately introduced him to her friends, and made room for him on the flat stone which served her for a seat.

Lidgerwood sat on a tie-end a little apart, morosely observant. It is the curse of the self-conscious soul to find itself often at the meeting-point of comparisons. The superintendent knew Flemister a little, as he had admitted to the president; and he also knew that some of his evil qualities were of the sort which appeal, by the law of opposites, to the normal woman, the woman who would condemn evil in the abstract, perhaps, only to be irresistibly drawn by some of its purely masculine manifestations. The cynical a.s.sertion that the worst of men can win the love of the best of women is something both more and less than a mere contradiction of terms; and since Eleanor Brewster's manly ideal was apparently builded upon physical courage as its pedestal, Flemister, in his dare-devil character, was quite likely to be the man to embody it.

But just now the "gentleman buccaneer" was not living up to the full measure of his reputation in the dare-devil field, as Lidgerwood was not slow to observe. His replies to Miss Brewster and the others were not always coherent, and his face, seen in the flickering firelight, was almost ghastly. True, the talk was low-toned and fragmentary; desultory enough to require little of any member of the group sitting around the smouldering fire on the spur embankment. Death, in any form, insists upon its rights, of silence and of respect, and the six motionless figures lying under the spread Pullman-car sheets on the other side of the spur track were not to be ignored.

Yet Lidgerwood fancied that of the group circling the fire, Flemister was the one whose eyes turned oftenest toward the sheeted figures across the track; sometimes in morbid starings, but now and again with the haggard side-glance of fear. Why was the mine-owner afraid? Lidgerwood a.n.a.lyzed the query shrewdly. Was he implicated in the matter of the loosened rail? Remembering that the trap had been set, not for the pa.s.senger train, but for the special, the superintendent dismissed the charge against Flemister. Thus far he had done little to incur the mine-owner's enmity--at least, nothing to call for cold-blooded murder in reprisal. Yet the man was acting very curiously. Much of the time he scarcely appeared to hear what Miss Brewster was saying to him.

Moreover, he had lied. Lidgerwood recalled his glib explanation at the meeting beside the displaced rail. Flemister claimed to have had the news of the disaster by 'phone: where had he been when the 'phone message found him? Not at his mine, Lidgerwood decided, since he could not have walked from the Wire-Silver to the wreck in an hour. It was all very puzzling, and what little suppositional evidence there was, was conflicting. Lidgerwood put the query aside finally, but with a mental reservation. Later he would go into this newest mystery and probe it to the bottom. Judson would doubtless have a report to make, and this might help in the probing.

Fortunately, the waiting interval was not greatly prolonged; fortunately, since for the three young women the reaction was come and the full horror of the disaster was beginning to make itself felt.

Lidgerwood contrived the necessary diversion when the relief-train from Red b.u.t.te shot around the curve of the hillside cutting.

"Van Lew, suppose you and Jefferis take the women out of the way for a few minutes, while we are making the transfer," he suggested quietly.

"There are enough of us to do the work, and we can spare you."

This left Flemister unaccounted for, but with a very palpable effort he shook himself free from the spell of whatever had been shackling him.

"That's right," he a.s.sented briskly. "I was just going to suggest that."

Then, indicating the men pouring out of the relief train: "I see that my buckies have come up on your train to lend a hand; command us just the same as if we belonged to you. That is what we are here for."

Van Lew and the collegian walked the three young women a little way up the old spur while the wrecked train's company, the living, the injured, and the dead, were transferring down the line to the relief-train to be taken back to Red b.u.t.te. Flemister helped with the other helpers, but Lidgerwood had an uncomfortable feeling that the man was always at his elbow; he was certainly there when the last of the wounded had been carried around the wreck, and the relief-train was ready to back away to Little b.u.t.te, where it could be turned upon the mine-spur "Y." It was while the conductor of the train was gathering his volunteers for departure that Flemister said what he had apparently been waiting for a chance to say.

"I can't help feeling indirectly responsible for this, Mr. Lidgerwood,"

he began, with something like a return of his habitual self-possession.

"If I hadn't asked you to come over here to-night----"

Lidgerwood interrupted sharply: "What possible difference would that have made, Mr. Flemister?"

It was not a special weakness of Flemister's to say the damaging thing under pressure of the untoward and unantic.i.p.ated event; it is rather a common failing of human nature. In a flash he appeared to realize that he had admitted too much.

"Why--I understood that it was the unexpected sight of your special standing on the 'Y' that made the pa.s.senger engineer lose his head," he countered lamely, evidently striving to recover himself and to efface the damaging admission.

It chanced that they were standing directly opposite the break in the track where the rail ends were still held apart by the small stone.

Lidgerwood pointed to the loosened rail, plainly visible under the volleying play of the two opposing headlights.

"There is the cause of the disaster, Mr. Flemister," he said hotly; "a trap set, not for the pa.s.senger-train, but for my special. Somebody set it; somebody who knew almost to a minute when we should reach it. Mr.

Flemister, let me tell you something: I don't care any more for my own life than a sane man ought to care, but the murdering devil who pulled the spikes on that rail reached out, unconsciously perhaps, but none the less certainly, after a life that I would safe-guard at the price of my own. Because he did that, I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"

It was the needed flick of the whip for the shaken nerve of the mine-owner.

"Ah," said he, "I am sure every one will applaud that determination, Mr.

Lidgerwood; applaud it, and help you to see it through." And then, quite as calmly: "I suppose you will go back from here with your special, won't you? You can't get down to Little b.u.t.te until the track is repaired, and the wreck cleared. Your going back will make no difference in the right-of-way matter; I can arrange for a meeting with Grofield at any time--in Angels, if you prefer."

"Yes," said Lidgerwood absently, "I am going back from here."

"Then I guess I may as well ride down to my jumping-off place with my men; you don't need us any longer. Make my adieux to Miss Brewster and the young ladies, will you, please?"

Lidgerwood stood at the break in the track for some minutes after the retreating relief-train had disappeared around the steep shoulder of the great hill; was still standing there when Bradford, having once more side-tracked the service-car on the abandoned mine spur, came down to ask for orders.

"We'll hold the siding until Dawson shows up with the wrecking-train,"

was the superintendent's reply, "He ought to be here before long. Where are Miss Brewster and her friends?"

"They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the j.a.p launder the car a little before they move in."

There was another interval of delay, and Lidgerwood held aloof from the group at the fire, pacing a slow sentry beat up and down beside the ditched train, and pausing at either turn to listen for the signal of Dawson's coming. It sounded at length: a series of shrill whistle-shrieks, distance-softened, and presently the drumming of hasting wheels.

The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped off to join the superintendent.

"Not so bad for my part of it, this time," was his comment, when he had looked the wreck over. Then he asked the inevitable question: "What did it?"

Lidgerwood beckoned him down the line and showed him the sprung rail.

Dawson examined it carefully before he rose up to say: "Why didn't they spring it the other way, if they wanted to make a thorough job of it?

That would have put the train into the river."

Lidgerwood's reply was as laconic as the query. "Because the trap was set for my car, going west; not for the pa.s.senger, going east."

"Of course," said the draftsman, as one properly disgusted with his own lack of perspicacity. Then, after another and more searching scrutiny, in which the headlight glare of his own engine was helped out by the burning of half a dozen matches: "Whoever did that, knew his business."

"How do you know?"

"Little things. A regular spike-puller claw-bar was used--the marks of its heel are still in the ties; the place was chosen to the exact rail-length--just where your engine would begin to hug the outside of the curve. Then the rail is sprung aside barely enough to let the wheel f.l.a.n.g.es through, and not enough to attract an engineer's attention unless he happened to be looking directly at it, and in a good light."

The superintendent nodded. "What is your inference?" he asked.

"Only what I say; that the man knew his business. He is no ordinary hobo; he is more likely in your cla.s.s, or mine."

Lidgerwood ground his heel into the gravel, and with the feeling that he was wasting precious time of Dawson's which should go into the track-clearing, asked another question.

"Fred, tell me; you've known John Judson longer than I have: do you trust him--when he's sober?"

"Yes." The answer was unqualified.

"I think I do, but he talks too much. He is over here, somewhere, to-night, shadowing the man who may have done this. He--and the man--came down on 205 this evening. I saw them both board the train at Angels as it was pulling out."

Dawson looked up quickly, and for once the reticence which was his customary shield was dropped.

"You're trusting me, now, Mr. Lidgerwood: who was the man? Gridley?"

"Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"

"All right; if you think so."

"Don't you think so?"