“Look who’s here!” Dick muttered morosely—“Grissby—the O. C. chief. You’d say he has a nerve, wouldn’t you?—to come walking in here on us at a time like this!”
“I’ll say so!” growled Larry; and as they were turning away the big, bearded intruder came up, smiling grimly.
“Hello, boys,” he said, “where’s your boss?”
Before they could reply their own chief came across from one of the breakfast fires.
“How are you, Ackerman?” was the newcomer’s greeting. “Thought I’d run down and congratulate you on the fine piece of work you’ve been doing in these last two days. You’ve broken all the track-laying records in this neck of woods. But, as you see, it doesn’t do you any good.”
The Short Line chief shook his head, matching the grin of triumph with a quiet smile.
“You can’t block this crossing indefinitely, Grissby, and you know it,” he returned, and the two boys stood aside, listening with all their ears. “This is our right-of-way, located and filed upon long before your people ever thought of building to Little Ophir, and we can prove it in court. As you probably know, injunction proceedings have already been begun. You’ll have to move out when a United States court officer comes up here with the judge’s order.”
“You are forgetting ‘the law’s inevitable delays’,” the visitor put in, in genial mockery. “Long before your court order gets here we’ll be laying track into Little Ophir.”
“Not with the amount of building material you have up ahead of this blockade of yours—and which you can’t add to so long as you are obstructing your own track,” was the smiling retort. Then: “I’ll be obliged to you, Grissby, if you’ll turn Blaisdell, my instrumentman, and his helper loose. I’m taking it for granted that you’ve got them locked up somewhere.”