De Reamer gave him something near a free hand, – ordered Chief Engineer Tiffany to let him alone, beyond giving every assistance in getting material to the front, and accepting the track for the company as fast as it was laid.
And as Tiffany was not at all a bad fellow, and had admired Carhart’s part in the Rio Grande fight (though he would have managed some things differently, not to say better, himself), the two engineers seemed likely to get on very well.
Carhart’s three trains would hardly get over the five hundred miles which lay between Sherman and the end of the track in less than twenty-seven or twenty-eight hours. “The private car,” as the boys called it, was of an old type even for those days, and was very uncomfortable. Everybody, from the chief down, had shed coat and waistcoat before the ragged skyline of Sherman slipped out of view behind the yellow pine trees. The car swayed and lurched so violently that it was impossible to stand in the aisle without support. As the hours dragged by, several of the party curled up on the hard seats and tried to sleep. The instrument and rod and stake men and the pile inspectors, mostly young fellows recently out of college or technical institute, got together at one end of the car and sang college songs.
Carhart was sitting back, his feet up on the opposite seat, watching for the pines to thin out, and thinking of the endless gray chaparral and sage-brush which they would find about them in the morning, – if the train didn’t break down, – when he saw Tiffany’s big person balancing down the aisle toward him. Tiffany had been quiet a long time; now he had a story in his eye.
“Well,” he said, as he slid down beside Carhart, “I knew the old gentleman would pull it off in time, but I never supposed he could make the Commodore pay the bills.”
Carhart glanced up inquiringly.
“Didn’t you hear about it? Well, say! I happen to know that a month ago Mr. De Reamer actually didn’t have the money to carry this work through. Even when Commodore Durfee started building for Red Hills, he didn’t know which way to turn. The Commodore, you know, hadn’t any notion of stopping with the H.D.& W.”
“No,” said Carhart, “I didn’t suppose he had.”
“He was after us, too – wanted to do the same as he did with the High and Dry, corner the stock.” Tiffany chuckled. “But he knew he’d have to corner Daniel De Reamer first. If he didn’t, the old gentleman would manufacture shares by the hundred thousand and pump ’em right into him. There’s the Paradise Southern, – that’s been a regular fountain of stock. You knew about that.”
Carhart shook his head.
“We passed through Paradise this noon.”
“Yes, I know the line. It runs down from Paradise to Total Wreck. But I didn’t know it had anything to do with S. & W. capital stock.”
“Didn’t, eh?” chuckled Tiffany. “Mr. De Reamer and Mr. Chambers own it, you know, and they’re directors in both lines. The old game was for them, as P. S. directors, to lease the short line to themselves as S. & W. directors. Then the S.& W. directors pay the P. S. directors – only they’re it both ways – in S. & W. stock. Don’t you see? And it’s only one of a dozen schemes. The old gentleman’s always ready for S. & W. buyers.”
Carhart smiled. The car lurched and shivered. Such air as came in through the open door and windows was tainted with the gases of the locomotive, and with the mingled odors of the densely packed laborers in the cars ahead.
“That’s really the only reason they’ve kept up the Paradise Southern – for there isn’t any business on the line. Well, as I was saying, the Commodore knew that the first thing he had to do was corner Mr. De Reamer, and keep him from creating stock. So he came down on him all at once, with a heap of injunctions and court orders. He did it thorough: restrained the S. & W. board from issuing any more stock, or from completing any of the transactions on hand, and temporarily suspended the old gentleman and Mr. Chambers, pending an investigation of their accounts, and ordered ’em to return to the treasury of the company the seventy thousand shares they created last year. There was a lot more, but that’s the gist of it. He did it through Waring and his other minority directors on the board. And right at the start, you see, when he began to buy, he made S. & W. stock so scarce that the price shot up.”
“Seems as if he had sewed up the S. & W. pretty tight,” observed Carhart.
“Didn’t it, though? But the Commodore didn’t know the old gentleman as well as he thought. Mr. De Reamer and Mr. Chambers got another judge to issue orders for them to do everything the Commodore’s judge forbid – tangled it all up so that everything they did or didn’t do, they’d be disobeying somebody, and leaving it for the judges to settle among themselves. Then they issued ten million dollars in convertible bonds to a dummy, representing themselves, turned ’em right into stock, – and tangled that transaction up so nobody in earth or heaven will ever know just exactly what was done, – and sold ‘most seventy thousand shares of it to Commodore Durfee before he had a glimmer of where it was coming from. And then it was too late for him to stop buying, so he had to take in the whole hundred thousand shares. I heard Mr. Chambers say that when the Commodore found ’em out, he was so mad he couldn’t talk, – stormed stormed around his office trying to curse Daniel De Reamer, but he couldn’t even swear intelligent.”
“So Mr. De Reamer beat him,” said Carhart.
“Beat him? – I wonder – ”
“But that’s not all, surely. Commodore Durfee isn’t the man to swallow that.”
“He had to swallow it. – Oh, he did kick up some fuss, but it didn’t do him any good. His judge tried to jerk up our people for contempt, but they were warned and got out of Mr. De Reamer’s Broad Street office, and over into New Jersey with all the documents and money.” Tiffany’s good-humored eyes lighted up as his mind dwelt on the fight. Never was there a more loyal railroad man than this one. Daniel De Reamer was his king, and his king could do no wrong. “Not that they didn’t have some excitement getting away,” he continued. “They say, – mind, I don’t know this, but they say that Mr. De Reamer’s secretary, young Crittenden, crossed the ferry in a cab with four million five hundred thousand dollars in bills– just tied up rough in bundles so they could be thrown around. And there you are, – Commodore Durfee is paying for this extension that’s going to cut him out of the C. & S. C. through business. The money and papers are out of his reach. The judges are fighting among themselves, and will be doing well if they ever come to a settlement. And now if that ain’t pretty slick business, I’d like to know what the word ‘slick’ means.”
Carhart almost laughed aloud. He turned and looked out the window for a few moments. Finally he said, “If you have that straight, Tiffany, it’s undoubtedly the worst defeat Commodore Durfee ever had. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the S. & W. is through with him.”
“Maybe not,” Tiffany replied, “but I’ll bet proper on the old gentleman.”
Carhart’s position as the engineer in charge of a thousand and more men would be not unlike that of a military commander who finds himself dependent for subsistence on five hundred miles of what Scribner called “very sketchy” single track. It would be more serious; for not only must food, and in the desert, water, be brought out over the line, but also the vast quantity of material needed in the work. It would be the business of Peet, as the working head of the operating department, to deliver the material from day to day, and week to week, at the end of the last completed section, where the working train would be made up each night for the construction work of the following day.
If the existing track was
