“By Jove, Calvin, you’re a wizard!” he exclaimed. “Your guess is better than another man’s eyesight. They’ve not only got the light outfit—they’ve strung it up and gone to work! Benson says they are laying a track out across the valley of the Pannikin like this,” and he traced a curving line on the blue-print, which Sprague was still holding spread out on his knees.
Sprague nodded slowly. “That is move Number One,” he said. “Dick, you’re in for a fight to a finish, this time. They’ve got you foul in some way, and they are so sure of it that they are already beginning to take possession. Don’t you see what this new track means?”
“No, I don’t,” Maxwell confessed, with a frown of perplexity.
“You will see before to-morrow night. Pull yourself together, old man, and do a little clear-headed reasoning. Why are these people starting out to build a railroad at ten o’clock Saturday night? Surely you’ve had experience enough in crossing fights to know what that means!”
Maxwell straightened up and swore out of a full heart.
“You mean that they are going to cut a crossing through the Southwestern main line, and do it on Sunday, when our people can’t stop them with a court injunction?”
“You’ve surrounded at least half of it,” said the expert. “The other half will come later. If I wasn’t going away to-morrow——”
Maxwell walked to the window and stared across at the flaming arc light hanging in front of the Hotel Topaz on the opposite side of the plaza. When he turned again, Sprague had rolled the blue-print into a tube and was laying it on the desk.
“Calvin, you’ve had time to think it over,” said the man at the window. “You haven’t made it very plain for me, but I can understand that it’s friendship against—against the girl. I’m human enough to know what that means, but——”
Sprague was holding up one of his big square-fingered hands in protest.