“Yes.”
Another series of the smoke rings, and then: “Well, I didn’t tell you you couldn’t talk, did I?”
Maxwell did not haggle over the inverted terms of the permission to talk. The necessity was too pressing.
“Benson has struck something that he can’t account for. For a week or more the Transcontinental people have been gathering a working camp at the Copah end of the bridge on which their Jack’s Canyon branch crosses the Pannikin. Nobody seems to know what they are going to do, or where they are going to do it. At Leckhard’s suggestion, I sent Benson over to pry around a little.”
“And he hasn’t found out what the T-C. folks have in mind?”
“No, he hasn’t. But it is plainly some sort of a track-building job. He says they have a hundred or more scraper-teams in camp, a train-load of new steel, and forty car-loads of cross-ties. And this afternoon they brought down a mechanical rail-layer—a machine much used nowadays for rushing a job of track-laying.”
The big guest smoked reflectively for a full minute or more before he said: “No jangle with the Copah city authorities about any trackage rights in the town, or street crossings, or anything of that sort?”
“Not that I have ever heard of. The T-C. has its own Copah yard, and has a switching connection with the Pacific Southwestern yard tracks; though, naturally, there is little exchange of business between the two competitive systems.”
“Do they connect with you?” asked Sprague.
“Not directly. Our yard was originally an independent lay-out, lying a mile to the west of town. When the Short Line became a grand division of the Pacific Southwestern, the two yards, ours and the P. S-W., were operated as one, though they are still separate lay-outs.”