neth, as they were passing one of the wilderness
bar-rooms buttressing a huge boulder by the trail side. "I should think
you'd rule those fellows emphatically and peremptorily out of the game,
Ford. They must make a lot of trouble for you, first and last."

"They do," was the sober response. "But how would you go about it to
rule them out?"

The lawyer laughed. "My writs don't run this far. But I thought yours
did. Why don't you fire 'em bodily; tell 'em their number is
23--skiddoo! Aren't you the Sublime Porte--the court of last resort--the
big boss--over here?"

Ford pulled his horse down to a walk.

"Kenneth, let me tell you: behind those barkeepers are the contractors;
behind the contractors is Mr. North; behind Mr. North, the president. My
little lever isn't long enough to turn the world over."

"Pshaw!" said Kenneth. "Mr. Colbrith wouldn't stand for anything like
that! Why, he's a perfect fanatic on the whisky question."

"That's all right," said Ford acidly. "It doesn't go as far as Mr.
Colbrith in the matter of the debauching particulars. It stops in
Denver; and Mr. Colbrith approves Denver in the lump--signs the vouchers
without looking at them, as Evans would say. I tell you what I
believe--what I am compelled to believe. These individual saloon-keepers
are supposed to be in here on their own hook, on sufferance. They are
not; they are merely the employees of a close corporation. Among the
profit sharers you'll find the MacMorroghs at the top, and Mr. North's
little ring of Denver officials close seconds."

"Do you honestly believe that, Ford?"

"I do. I can't prove it, of course. If I could, I'd go to New York and
fight it out. And the whisky isn't all of it, or even the worst: there
are women in some of these camps, and there would be more if Leckhard
didn't stand guard at Saint's Rest and turn them back."

"Heavens--what a cesspool!" said the attorney. "Does a laboring man ever
get out of here with any of his earnings?"

"Not if the MacMorroghs can help it. And you can figure for yourself
what the moral atmosphere must be. We are less than two months old on
the work, but already the Western Extension is a streak of crime; crime
unpunished, and at times tacitly encouraged. You may say that my
department isn't responsible--that this is the contractors' day and
game. If that is true now--which it isn't--it will no longer be true
when we come in with our own employees, the track-layers."

But now K