rd shook his head. "Not openly, at least. North was down to meet my
train when I came in last night, and you would never have suspected that
I left Denver six weeks ago without his blessing. And now I'm reminded.
I have a luncheon appointment with him at twelve, and a lot of letters
to dictate before I can keep it. Go down and do your wiring for Crapsey,
and if we lose each other this afternoon, I'll meet you here at dinner
this evening."

It was while Ford was working on his mail, with one of the hotel
stenographers for a helper, that a thick-set, bull-necked man with
Irish-blue eyes and a face two-thirds hidden in a curly tangle of
iron-gray beard, stubbed through the corridor on the Pacific
Southwestern floor of the Guaranty Building, and let himself cautiously
into the general manager's outer office. The private secretary, a
faultlessly groomed young fellow with a suggestion of the Latin races in
his features, looked up and nodded.

"How are you, Mr. MacMorrogh?" he said; and without waiting for a reply:
"Go on in. Mr. North is expecting you."

The burly one returned the nod and passed on to the inner room. The
general manager, a sallow, heavy-visaged man who might have passed in a
platform gathering for a retired manufacturer or a senator from the
Middle West, swung in his pivot-chair to welcome the incomer.

"Glad to see you, MacMorrogh. Sit down. What's the news from New York?"

The contractor found a chair; drew it close to the general manager's
desk, and filled it.

"I'm thinking you'll know more about that than I will, Misther North,"
he replied, in a voice that accorded perfectly with the burly figure and
piratical beard. "Ford's fighting us with his fishtes."

"Why?" asked the general manager, holding his chin in his hand--a
gesture known the entire length of the Pacific Southwestern as a signal
of trouble brewing, for somebody.

"God knows, then; I don't," said the MacMorrogh. "I wint to Chicago to
see him when the bid was in, and d'ye think he would lave me talk it
over with him? Not him! Wan day he'd be too busy; and the next, I'd have
to call again. 'Twas good for him I was not me brother Dan. Dan would've
kicked the dure in and t'rown him out av the windy."

The wan ghost of a smile flitted across the impassive face of the big
man at the desk.

"Let me tell you something, MacMorrogh. If you, or your brother Dan,
ever find it necessary to go after Ford, don't give him notice by
battering down