cing
black eyes of Mr. Julius Eckstein, whom we saw, on the morning of this
same road-wearying day, welcoming Adair over the counter railing in the
Denver office. How does it come that a few short hours later we find him
galloping tantivy over the dusty hills, no less than two hundred miles,
as the birds fly, from the counter railing of welcomings?

That is the story of another, and a more successful special train than
Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to
meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires
began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious
half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the
end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that
half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his hand to some good purpose.

With the fresh complications promised by Adair's projection into the
field, a stronger man than Penfield should be in command on the firing
line. The vice-president decided swiftly that Eckstein was the man; but
how to get him to the MacMorrogh headquarters before Adair should
arrive?

It proved to be simpler in the outcarrying than in the planning. A
special light engine over the Transcontinental to Jack's Canyon--an
exchange of courtesies which even fighting railroads make in war as well
as in peace--a wire request on the stage company for relays of saddle
horses, and the thing was done. And Eckstein, pushing his jaded beast
down the final hill in the dusk of the evening, and welcoming, as only
the saddle-tormented can welcome, the lights of the headquarters camp,
confessed in cursings quite barbaric in their phrasings that he, too,
was done.

The conference held that night behind locked doors in the MacMorroghs'
commissary office was a council of five, with Eckstein, as the
mouthpiece of the vice-president, in the chair. Penfield was present,
with no vote, and the three MacMorroghs voted as one; but as to that,
there were no divisions. A crisis was imminent, and it must be met.

"As I have said, I am here with power to act," said Eckstein, gripping
the chair with wincings after the day of torment. "The plan outlined at
first by Mr. North must go through as it was outlined. Part of it has
already been carried out, you say: Ford and the president have been over
the short-cut together. To-morrow the entire private-car party goes to
Copah over the detour. Are the buckboards here for that?"