The San Francisco call., 1908-11-01
CHAPTER XIII
The Barbarians

1T was some little time after the
rock had begun to fly from the cut
tings on the western slopes of the
mountains that Kenneth, sum-
moned by Ford, made the run from
Denver to Saints Rest over the stand
ardized Plug Mountain branch and
found the engineer manager living in
a twenty foot caboose car fitted as
hotel and an office-on-wheels.
The occasion of Kenneth's calling
was a right of way dispute on the bor-
ders of the distant Copah mining dis
trIct; some half dozen mining claims
having been staked off across the old
S. l. & w. survey. The owners, keen
to make killing out of the railroad
company, threatened injunctions if the
P. S.-W. persisted in trespassing upon
private property; and Ford, suspecting
shrewdly that the mine men were set
on by the Transcontinental people to
delay the work on the new line, made
haste to shift his responsibility to the
legal shoulders.
.If / hadn't known you for a pretty
good mountaineer. Kenneth, you would
have missed this he said, making his
guest free of the limited hospitality of
the caboose-hotel. Are you good for
a ESQ mile cayuse ride, there and back.
on the same trail we tramped over a
year ago last spring"
+Im good for everything en- the bill
Of fare" was the heartening reply.
How are things going?'
Ford's rejoinder began with a nom
committal shrug. Were. building a
railroad after a fashion ::
After q good fashion, 1 HOPPER
Another shrug.
Were doing as well as we can with
the help we have. But about this
right of way tangle-" and he plunged
his guest into a discussion of the Copah
situation which ran on unbroken until
bedtime.
They took the westward trail to-
gether in the morning.. mounted upon
wiry little mountain-bred ponies fur
nished by one Pacheco, the half breed
Mexican who had once earned an easy
double eagle by spying upon two men
who were out hunting with an en-
gineer's transit. For seven weeks
Frisbie had been pushing things, and
the grade from Saints Rest to the sum
NIT of the pass was already prac-
ticable wagon road, deserted by the
leveling squads and ready for the ties
and steel.
From the summit of the pass
westward, down the mountain and
through the high-lying upper val
ley OF the Pannikin, the grade
work was IN Lull SWING Lie -uOISS
trail. sometimes rough cart road,
but oftener a mere bfidle path, fol-
lowed the railroad in it's loopings and
doublings; and on the mountain sec
tions where the work was heaviest the
two riders were never out of sight or
the heavily manned grading gangs.
ITO a man up a tree you appear to
be doing a whole lot, and doing 1t
quickly, Ford" commented the lawyer,
when they had passed camp after
camp of the workers. Then he added:
you are not having any trouble with
the MacMorroghs, are you?"
mot what the legal department
would call trouble" answered Ford
evasively: and for 10 other miles the
narrowness OF the bride path discour-
aged conversation.
Farther down in the valley of the
Pannikin the activities were less thick
ly sown. On many sections the work
was light; no more than a.throwing up
of an embankment in. the park like
intervals with now and then a rock or
earth cutting through some jutting
spur of the inclosing mountains. Here
the men were punched on the rock
work and the fills. though the camp
sites were commonly in the parklike
interspaces where wood and water, the
sole commodities for which the con-
tractors could make no deductions on
the payroll, lay conveniently at the