"Things like that," the man called Floyd observed jerking his head backward, "always get my goat. I'll bet that young fellow's got the raw end of some dirty deal. He's taking a bitter dose of medicine. You can see it in his face."
"And I can make a pretty fair guess what it is," the other responded. "This fellow Braden has been trying to get information about our construction plans. He hinted that he had some sort of a townsite proposition to make to us, and if that place back there is it I give him credit for a good eye. He doesn't seem to have been very particular about how he went to work to get hold of it himself."
"What are you going to do about it, Mac?"
"What I should do," the other replied, frowning thoughtfully, "is to make a dicker with Braden to take over the land at a reasonable profit, after he had bid it in for the amount of his dinky mortgage. That's my plain duty to my employers, the Northern Airline, Mountain Section, for which they pay me a salary, large it is true, but small in comparison with my talents."
Floyd grinned. "Yes, I know you should do that. But what are you going to do?"
"Well," the man called Mac admitted, "I do hate to see a shark get away with anything but the hook. Besides, it looks to me as if Braden, if he got hold of the property would try to double-cross us. I'll bet he'd hold us up for some fancy price. So it's my duty to see he doesn't get a chance. The property is just about what we want. There's room for a good, little town. With that creek, a natural gravity water system could be put in. No trouble about drainage. You can get power, too. A subsidiary company formed to handle that end would pay well in a few years when the place got going. Ah, it's a bird of a proposition—too good to take any chances on."
"That's your end," Floyd nodded. "We go ahead and find the grades and put 'em in, and you fat office guys come along and clean up. Well, Healey's notes are all right so far. Easy construction through here. I'll send young Davis in right away and let him run a trial line east, for Broderick to tie into."
"Don't be in a hurry," the other responded. "Trouble with you roughneck engineers, you think all there is to a railroad is building it. You wait till I pick up what I want. I could fix it with Braden, but he'd get the profit, and that young fellow back there would go broke, as he said. I think I'll try to fix it so he gets the profit. I'll just bid the place in over Braden, and the young fellow will get any surplus over the mortgage claim. It will be just as cheap for us."
"And the trouble with you," said the chief of Northern Airline construction to its chief right-of-way and natural resources man, "is that you're mushy about men in hard luck. I know some corporations you wouldn't last with as long as a pint of red-eye in a Swede rock gang."
"You're such a hard-hearted guy yourself!" sneered Mac, his round face reddening perceptibly. "No bowels of compassion. Practical man! Dam' hypocrite! Yah! you make me sick!"