hell are you fixing to fire at Mr. North?"

Ford grew interested at once.

"Tell me what you know, and perhaps I can piece it out for you."

"I'll tell you what Mr. North knows--which will be more to the purpose,
perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a
scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your
good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all
over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the
original S. L & W. preliminaries and rights-of-way on its proposed
extension."

Ford's eyes narrowed. He was thinking of the warning letter he would
have to write to Frisbie. But what he said was:

"I'd like to know how the dickens you guessed all that. But no matter;
supposing I did?"

"It's no good," said the auditor, shaking his head. "I'm talking as a
friend. North doesn't like you, personally; and if he did, you couldn't
persuade him to recommend anything in the way of an experiment on the
Plug Mountain. So far from extending your two-by-four branch--if that is
what you have in mind--he'd be much more likely to counsel its
abandonment, if the charter didn't require us to keep it going."

Ford found a cigar for the auditor, and lighted one for himself.

"From all of which I infer that the semiannual report of the Pacific
Southwestern is going to be a pretty bad one," he said, with carefully
assumed indifference.

Evans regarded him shrewdly.

"Are you guessing at that? Or is there a leak at our end of the line as
well as at yours?"

"Oh, it's a guess," laughed Ford. "Call it that, anyhow. At least, I
haven't any of your confidential clerks in my pay. But just how bad is
the report going to be?"

The auditor shook his head.

"Worse than the last one. Perhaps you have noticed that the stock has
dropped six points in the past week. You're one of the official family:
I don't mind telling you that we are in the nine-hole, Ford."

"Of course we are," said Ford, with calm conviction. "That much is
pretty evident to a man who merely reads the Wall Street news bulletins.
What is the matter with us--specifically, I mean?"

Evans shrugged.

"Are you a division superintendent on the system and don't know?" he
demanded. "We are too short at both ends. With our eastern terminal only
half-way to Chicago, we can't control the east-bound grain which grows
on our own line; and with the other end stopping short here at Denver,
we can't bi