“It was just that. A case of Hardin luck again. He stopped off in London to interest some capital there; following up a lead developed on the steamer. He was never a man to neglect a chance. Nothing came of it, though, and when he reached Glasgow, he found his man had died two days before. Or been killed, I’ve forgotten which. Three times Hardin’s crossed the ocean trying to corner the opportunity he thought he had found. It isn’t laziness, is his trouble. It’s just infernal luck.”
“Or over-astuteness, or procrastination,” criticized his listener to himself. He knew now what it was that had so changed Hardin. A man can not travel, even though he be hounding down a quick scent, without meeting strong influences. He had been thrown with hard men, strong men. It was an inevitable chiseling; not a miracle.
“I want to hear more of this some day. But this map. I don’t understand what you told me of this by-pass, Mr. Estrada.”
Their heads were still bending over Estrada’s rough work-bench when the Japanese cook announced that dinner was waiting in the adjoining car. MacLean and Bodefeldt and several young engineers joined them.
It had been, outwardly, a wasted day. Rickard had lounged, socially and physically. But before he turned in that night, he had learned the names and dispositions of his force; and some of their prejudices. Nothing, he summed up, could be guessed from the gentleness of the Mexican’s manner; Wooster’s antagonism was open and snappish. Silent was to be watched; and Hardin had already shown his hand.
The river, as he thought of it, appeared the least formidable of his opponents. He was imaging it as a high-spirited horse, maddened by the fumbling of its would-be captors. His task it was to lasso the proud stallion, lead it in bridled to the sterile land. No wonder Hardin was sore; his noose had slipped off one time too many! Hardin’s luck!
CHAPTER VI
RED TAPE
AT ten o’clock the next morning, Hardin, entering the office, again the general manager’s, found there before him, George MacLean the new director, and Percy Babcock, the treasurer, who had been put in by the Overland Pacific when the old company was reorganized. They had just come in from Los Angeles, the trip made in MacLean’s private car.
“Where’s Estrada?” inquired Hardin of Ogilvie, who was making a great show of industry at the desk in the center of the room.
Before Ogilvie could open his deliberate lips, Hardin’s question was answered by Babcock, a thin nervous man, strung on live wires. “Not here yet.”