The Last Spike by Cy Warman (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📕

to excuse me; I have some business with the President. Don't fail to look in on me when you come to town; and rest assured that the Santa Fe will leave nothing undone that might help your enterprise."

With a hearty handshake the Manager, usually a little frigid and remote, passed out, leaving Mr. Jones to the tender mercies of the chief engineer.

Up to this point there is nothing unusual in this story. The remarkable part is the fact that the building of a side track in an open plain turned out to be good business. In a year's time there was a neat station and more sidings. The town boomed with a rapidity that amazed even the boomers. To be sure, it had its relapses; but still, if you look from the window as the California Limited crashes by, you will see a pretty little town when you reach the point on the time-table called

"Garden City."


THE IRON HORSE AND THE TROLLEY

I

Two prospectors had three claims in a new camp in British Columbia, but they had not the $7.50 to pay for having them recorded. They told their story to Colonel Topping, author of "The Yellowstone Park," and the Colonel advanced the necessary amount. In time the prospectors returned $5.00 of the loan, and gave the Colonel one of the claims for the balance, but more for his kindness to them; for they reckoned it a bully good prospect. Because they considered it the best claim in the camp, they called it Le Roi. Subsequently the Colonel sold this "King," that had cost him $2.50, for $30,000.00.

The new owners of Le Roi stocked the claim; and for the following two or three years, when a man owed a debt that he was unwilling to pay, he paid it in Le Roi stock. If he felt like backing a doubtful horse, he put up a handful of mining stock to punish the winner. There is in the history of this interesting mine a story of a man swapping a lot of Le Roi stock for a burro. The former owner of the donkey took the stock and the man it came from into court, declaring that the paper was worthless, and that he had been buncoed. As late as 1894, a man who ran a restaurant offered 40,000 shares of Le Roi stock for four barrels of Canadian whiskey; but the whiskey man would not trade that way.

In the meantime, however, men were working in the mine; and now they began to ship ore. It was worth $27.00 a ton, and the stock became valuable. Scattered over the Northwest were 500,000 shares that were worth $500,000.00. Nearly all the men who had put money into the enterprise were Yankees,--mining men from Spokane, just over the border. These men began now to pick up all the stray shares that could be found; and in a little while eight-tenths of the shares were held by men living south of the line. At Northport, in Washington, they built one of the finest smelters in the Northwest, hauled their ore over there, and smelted it. The ore was rich in gold and copper. They put in a 300 horse-power hoisting-engine and a 40-drill air-compressor,--the largest in Canada,--taking all the money for these improvements out of the mine. The thing was a success, and news of it ran down to Chicago. A party of men with money started for the new gold fields, but as they were buying tickets three men rushed in and took tickets for Seattle. These were mining men; and those who had bought only to British Columbia cashed in, asked for transportation to the coast, and followed the crowd to the Klondike.

In that way Le Roi for the moment was forgotten.

II

The Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwest Territories, who had been a journalist and had a nose for news, heard of the new camp. All the while men were rushing to the Klondike, for it is the nature of man to go from home for a thing that he might secure under his own vine.

The Governor visited the new camp. A man named Ross Thompson had staked out a town at the foot of Le Roi dump and called it Rossland. The Governor put men to work quietly in the mine and then went back to his plank palace at Regina, capital of the Northwest Territories,--to a capital that looked for all the world like a Kansas frontier town that had just ceased to be the county seat. Here for months he waited, watching the "Imperial Limited" cross the prairie, receiving delegations of half-breeds and an occasional report from one of the common miners in Le Roi. If a capitalist came seeking a soft place to invest, the Governor pointed to the West-bound Limited and whispered in the stranger's ear. To all letters of inquiry coming from Ottawa or England,--letters from men who wanted to be told where to dig for gold,--he answered, "Klondike."

By and by the Governor went to Rossland again. The mine, of which he owned not a single share of stock, was still producing. When he left Rossland he knew all about the lower workings, the value and extent of the ore body.

By this time nearly all the Le Roi shares were held by Spokane people. The Governor, having arranged with a wealthy English syndicate, was in a position to buy the mine; but the owners did not seem anxious to sell. Eventually, however, when he was able to offer them an average of $7.50 for shares that had cost the holders but from ten to sixty cents a share, about half of them were willing to sell; the balance were not. Now the Governor cared nothing for this "balance" so long as he could secure a majority,--a controlling interest in the mine,--for the English would have it in no other way. A few thousand scattering shares he had already picked up, and now, from the faction who were willing to sell, he secured an option on 242,000 shares, which, together with the odd shares already secured, would put his friends in control of the property.

As news of the proposed sale got out, the gorge that was yawning between the two factions grew wider.

Finally, when the day arrived for the transfer to be made, the faction opposed to the sale prepared to make trouble for those who were selling, to prevent the moving of the seal of the company to Canada--in short, to stop the sale. They did not go with guns to the secretary and keeper of the seal and say, "Bide where ye be"; but they went into court and swore out warrants for the arrest of the secretary and those of the directors who favored the sale, charging them with conspiracy.

It was midnight in Spokane.

A black locomotive, hitched to a dark day-coach, stood in front of the Great Northern station. The dim light of the gauge lamp showed two nodding figures in the cab. Out on the platform a man walked up and down, keeping an eye on the engine, that was to cost him a cool $1000.00 for a hundred-mile run. Presently a man with his coat-collar about his ears stepped up into the gangway, shook the driver, and asked him where he was going.

"Goin' to sleep."

The man would not be denied, however, and when he became too pressing, the driver got up and explained that the cab of his engine was his castle, and made a move with his right foot.

"Hold," cried his tormentor, "do you know that you are about to lay violent hands upon an officer o' the law?"

"No," said the engineer, "but I'll lay a violent foot up agin the crown-sheet o' your trousers if you don't jump."

The man jumped.

Now the chief despatcher came from the station, stole along the shadow side of the car, and spoke to the man who had ordered the train.

A deputy sheriff climbed up on the rear end of the special, tried the door, shaded his eyes, and endeavored to look into the car.

"Have you the running orders?" asked the man who was paying for the entertainment.

"Yes."

"Let her go, then."

All this was in a low whisper; and now the despatcher climbed up on the fireman's side and pressed a bit of crumpled tissue-paper into the driver's hand.

"Pull out over the switches slowly, and when you are clear of the yards read your orders an' fly."

The driver opened the throttle gently, the big wheels began to revolve, and the next moment the sheriff and one of his deputies boarded the engine. They demanded to know where that train was bound for.

"The train," said the driver, tugging at the throttle, "is back there at the station. I'm goin' to the round-house."

When the sheriff, glancing back, saw that the coach had been cut off, he swung himself down.

"They've gi'n it up," said the deputy.

"I reckon--what's that?" said the sheriff. It was the wild, long whistle of the lone black engine just leaving the yards. The two officers faced each other and stood listening to the flutter of the straight stack of the black racer as she responded to the touch of the erstwhile drowsy driver, who was at that moment laughing at the high sheriff, and who would return to tell of it, and gloat in the streets of Spokane.

The sheriff knew that three of the men for whom he held warrants were at Hillier, seven miles on the way to Canada. This engine, then, had been sent to pick them up and bear them away over the border. An electric line paralleled the steam way to Hillier, and now the sheriff boarded a trolley and set sail to capture the engine, leaving one deputy to guard the special car.

By the time the engineer got the water worked out of his cylinders, the trolley was creeping up beside his tank. He saw the flash from the wire above as the car, nodding and dipping like a light boat in the wake of a ferry, shot beneath the cross-wires, and knew instantly that she was after him.

An electric car would not be ploughing through the gloom at that rate, without a ray of light, merely for the fun of the thing. A smile of contempt curled the lip of the driver as he cut the reverse-lever back to the first notch, put on the injector, and opened the throttle yet a little wider.

The two machines were running almost neck and neck now. The trolley cried, hissed, and spat fire in her mad effort to pass the locomotive. A few stray sparks went out of the engine-stack, and fell upon the roof of the racing car. At intervals of half a minute the fireman opened the furnace door; and by the flare of light from the white-hot fire-box the engine-driver could see the men on the teetering trolley,--the motor-man, the conductor, the sheriff, and his deputy.

Slowly now the black flier began to slip away from the electric machine.

The driver, smiling across the glare of the furnace door at his silent, sooty companion, touched the throttle again; and the great engine drew away from the trolley, as a jack-rabbit who has been fooling with a yellow dog passes swiftly out of reach of his silly yelp.

Now the men on the trolley heard the wild, triumphant scream of the iron horse whistling for Hillier. The three directors of Le Roi