cting its
track-end with the high-mountain Mecca of the treasure-seekers.

Then, indeed, the Denver syndicate saw its long deferred opportunity and
grasped it. Long purses might be lacking, but not shrewd heads. The
unfinished Plug Mountain was immediately bonded for more than it ever
promised to be worth, and in the hottest heat of the forwarding strife
it was extended at the rate of a mile a day until the welcome screech of
its locomotive whistles was added to the perfervid clamor of the new
camp in the Plug Pass basin.

The goal reached, the Denver folk took a fresh leaf out of the book of
shrewdness. Holding the completed line only long enough to skim the
cream of the rush earnings, they sold their stock at a sound premium to
the Pacific Southwestern, pocketed their winnings cannily, and escaped a
short half-year before the slump in silver, and the consequent collapse
of Saint's Rest, came to establish the future Waterloo for Napoleonic
young superintendents in the Southwestern's service.

This was all ancient history when Ford left the Granger road to climb,
at President Colbrith's behest, into the Plug Mountain saddle; and a
round half-dozen of the young Napoleons had been broken before he put
foot in stirrup for the mounting. While his attacking of the problem had
been open-eyed, he had not stopped to specialize in the ancient history
of the Plug Mountain branch. When he did specialize, his point of view
was pretty clearly defined in a letter to Mr. Richard Frisbie, of St.
Paul, written after he had been for six months the master of the Plug
Mountain destinies.

"I'm up against it, good and solid," was the way he phrased it to
Frisbie. "My hundred and fifty miles of 'two streaks of rust and a
right-of-way' has never paid a net dollar since the boom broke at
Saint's Rest, and under present conditions it never will. If I had known
the history of the road when President Colbrith went fishing for me--as
I didn't--I wouldn't have touched the job with a ten-foot pole.

"But now I'm here, I'm going to do something with my two streaks of rust
to make them pay--make a spoon or spoil a horn. Just what shall be done
I haven't decided fully, but I have a notion in the back part of my
head, and if it works out, I shall need you first of all. Will you come?

"Have I told you in any of my earlier letters that I have personally
earned the ill-will of General Manager North? I have, and it is distinct
from and in addition to