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

office. She saw him light a cigar and stroll down the long platform. At the rear of the last Pullman he threw his cigar away and crossed quickly to the shadow side of the train. She saw him pass along, for there were no vestibules then, and made no doubt he was climbing into Cassidy's car. As the messenger reached for his change, the cashier-manager caught his hand, drew it across the counter, leaned toward him, saying excitedly: "Be careful to-night, John; don't fall asleep or nod for a moment. Oh, be careful!" she repeated, with ever-increasing intensity, her hot hand trembling on his great wrist; "be careful, come back safe, and you shall have your answer."

When Cassidy came back to earth he was surrounded by half a dozen good-natured passengers, men and women, who had come out of the dining-room during the ten or fifteen seconds he had spent in Paradise.

A swift glance at the faces about told him that they had seen, another at Nora that she was embarrassed; but in two ticks of the office clock he protected her, as he would his safe; for his work and time had trained him to be ready instantly for any emergency.

"Good-night, sister," he called cheerily, as he hurried toward the door.

"Good-night, John," said Nora, glancing up from the till, radiant with the excitement of her "sweet distress."

"Oh, by Jove!" said a man.

"Huh!" said a woman, and they looked like people who had just missed a boat.

With her face against the window, Nora watched the red lights on the rear of No. 7 swing out to the main line.

* * * * *

Closing the desk, she climbed to her room on the third floor and knelt by the window. Away out on the shrouded vale she saw the dark train creeping, a solid stream of fire flowing from the short stack of the "shotgun"; for Peasley was pounding her for all she was worth in an honest effort to make up the hour that Shanley had lost in the snowdrifts of Marshall Pass. Presently she heard the muffled roar of the train on a trestle, and a moment later saw the Salt Lake Limited swallowed by the Black Canon, in whose sunless gorges many a driver died before the scenery settled after having been disturbed by the builders of the road.

Over ahead in his quiet car Cassidy sat musing, smoking, and wondering why Nora should seem so anxious about him. Turning, he glanced about. Everything looked right, but the girl's anxiety bothered him.

Picking up a bundle of way-bills, he began checking up. The engine screamed for Sapinero, and a moment later he felt the list as they rounded Dead Man's Curve.

Unless they were flagged, the next stop would be at Cimarron, at the other end of the canon.

His work done, the messenger lighted his pipe, settled himself in his high-backed canvas camp-chair, and put his feet up on his box for a good smoke. He tried to think of a number of things that had nothing whatever to do with Nora, but somehow she invariably elbowed into his thoughts.

He leaned over and opened his box--not the strong-box, but the wooden, trunk-like box that holds the messenger's street-coat when he's on duty and his jumper when he's off. On the under side of the lifted lid he had fixed a large panel picture of Nora O'Neal.

* * * * *

Buckingham, peering over a piano-box, behind which he had hidden at Gunnison, saw and recognized the photograph; for the messenger's white light stood on the little safe near the picture. For half an hour he had been watching Cassidy, wondering why he did not fall asleep. He had seen Nora put the cup down with her own hand, to guard, as he thought, against the possibility of a mistake. What will a woman not dare and do for the man she loves? He sighed softly. He recalled now that he had always exercised a powerful influence over women,--that is, the few he had known,--but he was surprised that this consistent Catholic girl should be so "dead easy."

"And now look at this one hundred and ninety-eight pounds of egotism sitting here smiling on the likeness of the lady who has just dropped bug-dust in his coffee. It's positively funny."

Such were the half-whispered musings of the would-be robber.

He actually grew drowsy waiting for Cassidy to go to sleep. The car lurched on a sharp curve, dislodging some boxes. Buck felt a strange, tingling sensation in his fingers and toes. Presently he nodded.

Cassidy sat gazing on the pictured face that had hovered over him in all his dreams for months, and as he gazed, seemed to feel her living presence. He rose as if to greet her, but kept his eyes upon the picture.

Suddenly realizing that something was wrong in his end of the car, Buck stood up, gripping the top of the piano-box. The scream of the engine startled him. The car crashed over the switch-frog at Curecanti, and Curecanti's Needle stabbed the starry vault above. The car swayed strangely and the lights grew dim.

Suddenly the awful truth flashed through his bewildered brain.

"O-o-o-oh, the wench!" he hissed, pulling his guns.

* * * * *

Cassidy, absorbed in the photo, heard a door slam; and it came to him instantly that Nora had boarded the train at Gunnison, and that some one was showing her over to the head end. As he turned to meet her, he saw Buck staggering toward him, holding a murderous gun in each hand. Instantly he reached for his revolver, but a double flash from the guns of the enemy blinded him and put out the bracket-lamps. As the messenger sprang forward to find his foe, the desperado lunged against him. Cassidy grabbed him, lifted him bodily, and smashed him to the floor of the car; but with the amazing tenacity and wonderful agility of the trained gun-fighter, Buck managed to fire as he fell. The big bullet grazed the top of Cassidy's head, and he fell unconscious across the half-dead desperado.

Buck felt about for his gun, which had fallen from his hand; but already the "bug-dust" was getting in its work. Sighing heavily, he joined the messenger in a quiet sleep.

At Cimarron they broke the car open, revived the sleepers, restored the outlaw to the Ohio State Prison, from which he had escaped, and the messenger to Nora O'Neal.


JACK RAMSEY'S REASON

When Bill Ross romped up over the range and blew into Edmonton in the wake of a warm chinook, bought tobacco at the Hudson's Bay store, and began to regale the gang with weird tales of true fissures, paying placers, and rich loads lying "virgin," as he said, in Northern British Columbia, the gang accepted his tobacco and stories for what they were worth; for it is a tradition up there that all men who come in with the Mudjekeewis are liars.

That was thirty years ago.

The same chinook winds that wafted Bill Ross and his rose-hued romances into town have winged them, and the memory of them, away.

In the meantime Ross reformed, forgot, the people forgave and made him Mayor of Edmonton.

* * * * *

When Jack Ramsey called at the capital of British Columbia and told of a territory in that great Province where the winter winds blew warm, where snow fell only once in a while and was gone again with the first peep of the sun; of a mountain-walled wonderland between the Coast Range and the Rockies, where flowers bloomed nine months in the year and gold could be panned on almost any of the countless rivers, men said he had come down from Alaska, and that he lied.

To be sure, they did not say that to Jack,--they only telegraphed it one to another over their cigars in the club. Some of them actually believed it, and one man who had made money in California and later in Leadville said he _knew_ it was so; for, said he, "Jack Ramsey never says or does a thing without a 'reason.'"

At the end of a week this English-bred Yankee had organized the "Chinook Mining and Milling Company, Limited."

This man was at the head of the scheme, with Jack Ramsey as Managing Director.

Ramsey was a prospector by nature made proficient by practice. He had prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he would be miserable for the balance of his days, or rather his to-morrows. He lived in his to-morrows,--in these and in dreams. He loved women, wine, and music, and the laughter of little children; but better than all these he loved the wilderness and the wildflowers and the soft, low singing of mountain rills. He loved the flowers of the North, for they were all sweet and innocent. On all the two thousand five hundred miles of the Yukon, he used to say, there is not one poisonous plant; and he reasoned that the plants of the Peace and the Pine and the red roses of the Upper Athabasca would be the same.

And so, one March morning, he sailed up the Sound to enter his mountain-walled wonderland by the portal of Port Simpson, which opens on the Pacific. His English-American friend went up as far as Simpson, and when the little coast steamer poked her prow into Work Channel he touched the President of the Chinook Mining and Milling Company and said, "The Gateway to God's world."

* * * * *

The head of the C.M. & M. Company was not surprised when Christmas came ahead of Jack Ramsey's preliminary report. Jack was a careful, conservative prospector, and would not send a report unless there was a good and substantial reason for writing it out.

In the following summer a letter came,--an extremely short one, considering what it contained; for it told, tersely, of great prospects in the wonderland. It closed with a request for a new rifle, some garden-seeds, and an H.B. letter of credit for five hundred dollars.

After a warm debate among the directors it was agreed the goods should go.

The following summer--that is, the second summer in the life of the Chinook Company--Dawson dawned on the world. That year about half the floating population of the Republic went to Cuba and the other half to the Klondike.

As the stream swelled and the channel between Vancouver Island and the mainland grew black with boats, the President of the C.M. & M. Company began to