The Daughter of a Magnate | Page 2

and timbers, and in the foreground two hulking
pile-drivers, their leads, like rabbits ears laid sleekly back, squatted
mysteriously. Switch engines puffed impatiently up and down the
ladder track shifting stuff to the distant spurs. At the river front an army
of men moved like loaded ants over the dikes. Beyond them the eye
could mark the boiling yellow of the Spider, its winding channel
marked through the waste of waters by whirling driftwood, bobbing

wreckage and plunging trees sweepings of a thousand angry miles.
"There's the Spider," repeated the West End conductor, pointing, "out
there in the middle where you see things moving right along. That's the
Spider, on a twenty-year rampage." The train, moving slowly, stopped.
"I guess we've got as close to it as we're going to, for awhile. I'll take a
look forward."
It was the time of the June water in the mountains. A year earlier the
rise had taken the Peace River bridge and with the second heavy year of
snow railroad men looked for new trouble. June is not a month for
despair, because the mountain men have never yet scheduled despair as
a West End liability. But it is a month that puts wrinkles in the right of
way clear across the desert and sows gray hairs in the roadmasters
records from McCloud to Bear Dance. That June the mountain streams
roared, the foothills floated, the plains puffed into sponge, and in the
thick of it all the Spider Water took a man-slaughtering streak and
started over the Bad Lands across lots. The big river forced Bucks hand
once more, and to protect the main line Glover, third of the mountain
roadbuilders, was ordered off the high-line construction and back to the
hills where Brodie and Hailey slept, to watch the Spider.
The special halted on a tongue of high ground flanking the bridge and
extending upstream to where the river was gnawing at the long dike
that held it off the approach. The delay was tedious. Doctor Lanning
and Allen Harrison went forward to smoke. Gertrude Brock took refuge
in a book and Mrs. Whitney, her aunt, annoyed her with stories. Marie
Brock and Louise Donner placed their chairs where they could watch
the sorting and unloading of never-ending strings of flat cars, the
spasmodic activity in the lines of laborers, the hurrying of the foremen
and the movement of the rapidly shifting fringe of men on the danger
line at the dike.
The clouds which had opened for the dying splendor of the day closed
and a shower swept over the valley; the conductor came back in his
raincoat his party were at dinner. "Are we to be detained much longer?"
asked Mrs. Whitney.
"For a little while, I'm afraid," replied the trainman diplomatically. "I've

been away over there on the dike to see if I could get permission to
cross, but I didn't succeed."
"Oh, conductor!" remonstrated Louise Donner.
"And we don't get to Medicine Bend to-night," said Doctor Lanning.
"What we need is a man of influence," suggested Harrison. "We ought
never to have let your pa go," he added, turning to Gertrude Brock,
beside whom he sat.
"Can't we really get ahead?" Gertrude lifted her brows reproachfully as
she addressed the conductor. "It's becoming very tiresome."
O'Brien shook his head.
"Why not see someone in authority?" she persisted.
"I have seen the man in authority, and nearly fell into the river doing it;
then he turned me down."
"Did you tell him who we were?" demanded Mrs. Whitney.
"I made all sorts of pleas."
"Does he know that Mr. Bucks promised we should be in Medicine
Bend to-night? I asked pretty little Marie Brock.
"He wouldn't in the least mind that."
Mrs. Whitney bridled. "Pray who is he?"
"The construction engineer of the mountain division is the man in
charge of the bridge just at present."
"It would be a very simple matter to get orders over his head,"
suggested Harrison.
"Not very."

"Mr. Bucks?"
"Hardly. No orders would take us over that bridge to-night without
Glover's permission."
"What an autocrat!" sighed Mrs. Whitney. "No matter; I don't care to
go over it, anyway."
"But I do," protested Gertrude. "I don't feel like staying in this water all
night, if you please."
"I'm afraid that's what we'll have to do for a few hours. I told Mr.
Glover he would be in trouble if I didn't get my people to Medicine
Bend to-night."
"Tell him again," laughed Doctor Lanning.
Conductor O'Brien looked embarrassed. "You d like to ask particular
leave of Mr. Glover for us, I know," suggested Miss Donner.
"Well, hardly the second time not of Mr. Glover." A sheet of rain
drenched the plate-glass windows. "But I'm going to watch things and
we'll get out just as soon