Trouble Shooter (Musaicum Vintage Western). Ernest Haycox

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      II

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      The three of them—Leach Overmile, Phil Morgan and Peace—shouldered into the crowd, skirting the fresh pine-boarded buildings of the railroad offices, turning around the vast piles of steel and ties and boxed supplies waiting here to be thrown forward to the end of track. Engines were backing down the sidings, rattling up the long strings of cars. Men were working near by on a new shed, with a huge bonfire to guide their hammers and their saws. A recent rain had turned Cheyenne's main street to a churned and beaten and knee-deep river of mud along which, even at this late hour, the toiling freight wagons were moving hub to hub in formless confusion.

      Across the gulf of mud Peace saw the glitter of Cheyenne's saloons and dance halls and business houses stretching away into the windy night. Tent or log framed or pine-boarded, all of them were booming with the traffic and trade of the newly opened construction year. Over on the corner of Eddy the vast shape of Campeaux's Club saloon, a circus tent fifty feet wide and a hundred feet long, emitted its solid gush of light, and a band in there made an enormous clatter through which the hoarse spiel of the barker at the door rose and fell.

      "Not a building here last July—and now look at it," observed Peace.

      "Nine thousand citizens," said Leach Overmile, He was all Texan, tall and thin and as soft-spoken as a girl. Cold as it was he wore only a thin cotton shirt and a pair of striped butternut breeches tucked into the low-topped boots characteristic of cattle land. A Colt's .44 slapped against his right thigh. "Steeped in sin and proud of it. Kinda tame against Julesburg, though. Vigilantes have got the tough ones temporarily scared. What's Omaha look like?"

      They turned into the Rollins House and walked up the stairs to the room Peace kept against his frequent passages in and out of the place. He dropped his plunder and lighted a lamp.

      "Omaha's busy but dull. More than a month of office work would kill me." He had his shirt off and he had poured himself a basin of water; standing in front of the dresser mirror, he lathered his face.

      Overmile dumped himself casually across the bed, lying full length. Phil Morgan, one of the junior civil engineers on the job, sat more properly in a chair. He was a year or two older than Peace, perpetually nursing a pipe. He had a settled, philosophical manner, with a gravity lining his mouth. He was content to let the others talk.

      "Who was that girl?" demanded Overmile.

      Peace brought his razor sweeping down his face. "Couldn't find out," he mumbled.

      "You tried," Overmile pointed out ironically. "All I got to say is, Big Sid sure has taste."

      "Sure."

      The door opened without ceremony and a pair of older men walked in. Peace laid down his razor. He said, "I was just coming over to the office, Sam. Hello, Jack."

      Sam Reed said, "You've heard the news, I suppose."

      Jack Casement said: "What's doing in Omaha?"

      They were both small, wiry men. Reed, superintendent of construction, had a rather gentle face set off by a heavy black beard. As for Jack Casement, who held the contract for laying steel all the way through, there was no gentleness about him. He was a terrier, a doughty, scrapping little terrier, physically unable to stand still, never unwilling to fight it out with any of the thousands working under him. Like Reed, he carried a full beard, the color of rust.

      Peace went back to finish his shaving. Casement fished up his pipe and began stirring around the room. Peace said: "Your brother Dan told me to say you can have eighty cars of material a day. Omaha looks like a freight dump. So does Council Bluff. Stuff piled story-high on both sides of the river. Ferries workin' twenty-four hours a day. What news, Sam?"

      The door opened again with a bang. A burly young man came in and said, "What the hell here, Peace?"

      "Mama Tarrant's little boy, Ed, once more," murmured Overmile, "This joint begins to resemble an old settlers' convention."

      Ed Tarrant went over and shook Peace with a broad blow on the back. "Here comes the swallow with the spring. So we whip hell out of the Central this year, don't we? Had supper? No? Well, what this room needs is a little more fraternity. Just wait right here. Don't move a step." He wheeled around and waggled his thumb profanely at Overmile and left them, slamming the door with a boisterous violence. Tobacco smoke began to turn the light blue.

      Overrnile said mildly: "That wild bull."

      "What news, Sam?" prompted Peace.

      Reed said: "Well, we had our schedule for '68 all set. We were to locate to Salt Lake and lay steel as far as the Wasatch range. With a little survey work done west of Salt Lake to Humboldt Wells. But last night I get a wire from Dodge. He's dropped his work in Congress and he'll be here within a week."

      Everybody paid Sam Reed strict attention. Peace stood still, the razor suspended. For General Dodge was chief engineer and his word was law to all of them.

      Reed went on in his dry way. "Our schedule's been knocked to pieces. The order now is to make our location lines final all the way to Salt Lake in thirty days, and to Humboldt Wells, 220 miles west of the lake, in another sixty days. We are, moreover, to cover the whole line with men, regardless of the cost, and get into Salt Lake with steel as fast as possible. It makes no difference where snow catches us this year. We are to keep on."

      Jack Casement said, "You hear? Five hundred miles of steel to be laid down, and no stops."

      "Why?" said Peace.

      Reed shrugged his shoulders. He had a trick of saying important things without emphasis. He moved his cigar to another corner of his mouth, speaking around it. "Under the original setup, the Central was to build from Frisco east to the California line and the Union was to build west from Omaha and meet them there. All of us know Huntington and Stanford and Crocker have been too ambitious to stop at the California line. So they had their charter changed and came on. Now they have persuaded the Secretary of the Interior that the Central is financially and morally purer than the Union and so should have more rewards. Well, it looked like brag until now. But the fact is that the Central has put the Sierras behind and they've got all the level stretches of Nevada in front, whereas we haven't yet reached our heavy work in the Wasatch chain."

      "Which," said Casement, СКАЧАТЬ