his office in the Guaranty
Building before Frisbie came down--the little man being trail-weary
enough to sleep late in the comfortable room at the Brown Palace. The
slight change of route was hardly a matter to be carried up to the
executive committee, and Ford's decision turned upon quite another
pivot--the addition of twelve miles of distance. As against this, safety
and economy won the day; and when Frisbie came in the talk was merely of
ways and means.

"Fix up the change with the MacMorroghs the best way you can," was
Ford's concluding instruction to his lieutenant. "They will kick, of
course; merely to be kicking at anything I suggest. But you can bring
them to terms, I guess."

"By my lonesome?" said Frisbie. "Aren't you going over to see the new
route with your own eyes?"

"No. I'm perfectly willing to trust your judgment, Dick. Besides, I've
got other fish to fry. I'm going east to-night to have one more tussle
with the steel mills. We must have quicker deliveries and more of them.
When I get back, we'll organize the track-layers and begin to make us a
railroad."

"Good," said Frisbie, gathering up his maps and sketches of the detour
country; and so, in the wording of a brief sentence or two it came to
pass that Ford delivered himself bound and unarmed into the hands of his
enemies.

A little light was thrown upon this dark passage that night in the
office of the general manager, after Ford's train had gone eastward, and
Frisbie was on his way back to the MacMorrogh headquarters on the lower
Pannikin. North was waiting when Eckstein came in, flushed as from a
rapid walk.

"It's all settled?" asked the general manager, with a slow lift of the
eyebrow to betray his anxiety.

"To the queen's taste, I should say," was the secretary's not too
deferential reply. "Ford's out of the way, to be gone ten days or a
fortnight, and Frisbie has gone back to dicker with MacMorrogh, and to
survey the new route up Horse Creek. Ford doesn't know; I doubt if he
will ever know until we spring the trap on him. The one thing I was most
afraid of was that he would insist upon going over the new line himself.
Then, of course, he would have found out--he couldn't help finding out."

The general manager squared his huge shoulders against the back of the
chair.

"You think he would call it off if he knew?" he queried. "You give him
credit for too much virtue, Eckstein. But I think we have him now. By
the time he returns it w