, if the Mansion House were to be
henceforth the only hotel in town, Ashby saw a chance to prosper on a
more than comfortable scale.

"Ashby," Tom went on, rather frigidly, "I won't waste many words, for
I'm afraid I don't like you well enough to talk very much to you. The
A., G. & N. M. has bought this land from Mr. Carter. The railroad is
going to erect here one of the finest hotels in this part of Arizona. It
will have every modern convenience, and will make your hotel look like a
mill boarding house by contrast. When the new hotel is completed it will
be leased to Mr. Carter. With his insurance money, and the price of
the land in bank, Carter will have capital for embarking in the hotel
business on a scale that will make this end of Arizona sit up and do
some hard looking."

As he listened Proprietor Ashby's jaw dropped. His color came and went.
He swallowed hard, while his hands worked convulsively. With the fine
new hotel that was coming to Paloma the owner of the Mansion House saw
himself driven hopelessly into the background. "Reade, this new hotel
game is some of your doings," growled the hotel man.

"I'm proud to say that it is partly my doing," Tom admitted, with a
smile. "Harry, let's go along to the restaurant. I'm hungry."

As the two young engineers stepped into the car and were driven away,
Ashby dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands.

"So I'm to be beaten out of the hotel game here, am I!" the hotel man
asked himself, gritting his teeth. "I'm to be driven out by Reade, the
fellow whom I once kicked out of my hotel! Oh--well, all right!"

CHAPTER XVIII. TRAGEDY CAPS THE TEST

"Pass the signal!" directed Tom.

A railroad man with a flag made several swift moves. Down the track an
engineman, in his cab, answered with a short blast of, the whistle. Then
he threw over the lever, and a train of ten flat cars started along in
the engine's wake.

It was the first test--the "small test," Tom called it--of the track
that now extended across the surface of the Man-killer.

On each flat car were piled ten tons of steel rails, to be used further
along in the construction work. With engine, cars and all, the load
amounted to one hundred and fifty tons, the pressure of which would
be exerted over a comparatively short strip of the new track that now
glistened over the Man-killer.

Mounted on his pony, Harry Hazelton had galloped a considerable distance
down the track. Now, halted, he had