e had first met Miss Craigmiles.

On the Wednesday evening following, he was gathering his belongings in
the sleeper of a belated Chicago train preparatory to another dash
across platforms--this time in the echoing station at Council Bluffs--to
catch the waiting "Overland Flyer" for the run to Denver.

President Pelham's telegram, which had found him in Boston on the eve of
closing a contract with the sugar magnates to go and build refineries in
Cuba, was quite brief, but it bespoke haste:

"We need a fighting man who can build railroads and dams and
dig ditches in Arcadia. Salary satisfactory to you. Wire quick
if you can come."

This was the wording of it; and at the evening hour of train-changing in
Council Bluffs, Ballard was sixteen hundred miles on his way, racing
definitely to a conference with the president of Arcadia Irrigation in
Denver, with the warning telegram from Lassley no more than a vague
disturbing under-thought.

What would lie beyond the conference he knew only in the large. As an
industrial captain in touch with the moving world of great projects, he
was familiar with the plan for the reclamation of the Arcadian desert. A
dam was in process of construction, the waters of a mountain torrent
were to be impounded, a system of irrigating canals opened, and a
connecting link of railway built. Much of the work, he understood, was
already done; and he was to take charge as chief of construction and
carry it to its conclusion.

So much President Pelham's summons made clear. But what was the mystery
hinted at in Lassley's telegram? And did it have any connection with
that phrase in President Pelham's wire: "We need a fighting man"?

These queries, not yet satisfactorily answered, were presenting
themselves afresh when Ballard followed the porter to the section
reserved for him in the Denver sleeper. The car was well filled; and
when he could break away from the speculative entanglement long enough
to look about him, he saw that the women passengers were numerous enough
to make it more than probable that he would be asked, later on, to give
up his lower berth to one of them.

Being masculinely selfish, and a seasoned traveller withal, he was
steeling himself to say "No" to this request what time the train was
rumbling over the great bridge spanning the Missouri. The bridge passage
was leisurely, and there was time for a determined strengthening of the
selfish defenses.

But at the O