“Bless youh innocent soul—he a picchuh—painteh? Not in a thousand yeahs, my deah Virginia. He is a railroad man, and a right good one at that. Faveh me with the name again; Winteh, did you say?”
“No; Winton—Mr. John Winton.”
“D-d-devil!” gritted the Rajah, smiting the hand-rail with his clenched fist. “Hah! I beg your pahdon, my deahs—a meah slip of the tongue.” And then, to the full as savagely: “By Heaven, I hope that train will fly the track and ditch him before eveh he comes within ordering distance of the work in Qua'tz Creek Canyon!”
“Why, Uncle Somerville—how vindictive!” cried Virginia. “Who is he, and what has he done?”
“He is Misteh John Winton, as you informed me just now; one of the brainiest constructing engineers in this entiah country, and the hardest man in this or any otheh country to down in a right-of-way fight—that's who he is. And it's not what he's done, my deah Virginia, it's what he is going to do. If I can't get him killed up out of ouh way,”—but here Mr. Darrah saw the growing terror in two pairs of eyes, and realizing that he was committing himself before an unsympathetic audience, beat a hasty retreat to his stronghold at the other end of the Rosemary.
“Well!” said the flaxen-haired Bessie, catching her breath. But Virginia laughed.
“I'm glad I'm not Mr. Winton,” she said.
IV. THE CRYSTALLINE ALTITUDES
Morning in the highest highlands of the Rockies, a morning clear, cold, and tense, with a bell-like quality in the frosty air to make the cracking of a snow-laden spruce-bough resound like a pistol-shot. For Denver and the dwellers on the eastern plain the sun is an hour high; but the hamlet mining-camp of Argentine, with its dovecote railway station and two-pronged siding, still lies in the steel-blue depths of the canyon shadow.