"Is everything all right?"
"Yes, Symonds is standing pat, but they don't know it. The new General Manager comes in to-morrow, but Symonds's orders will go through first. That train will run, Jeff—sure."
"Poor old Larry! a fine honeymoon you're having! Where's your wife?"
"At the Wetherall Ranch. Went out there last night. Her mother has been out to see her. It looks as though they might come around. It's too bad I had to go against them just now, but Mr. Janney forced my hand, and I had to. You understand, don't you, Jeff?" And, explaining as they went, Berkely followed Jeff out of the station, into a motor-car that was awaiting them.
CHAPTER XXV
THE CRISIS
One of the rooms in Janney's suite had been turned into an office for General Bent, and here it was that all the conferences between the officers of the Amalgamated Reduction Company and their underlings had taken place. The big men of Denver had all called to pay their respects to the bigger man from the East, and some of them had taken part in the business of reorganizing the Denver and California and its subsidiary companies.
But in spite of the conditions which had made Bent's control of the railroad possible and the money the crowd would make out of it, everybody in this intimate circle knew that the real object of the General's financial operations was the fight of the Amalgamated Reduction Company for the ownership of the Saguache Smelter. The reorganization of the Denver and California had now been completed, and this morning orders had gone forth removing Clinton, Symonds, and all the old crowd from the active management of the road.
General Bent sat at the end of the long desk table in conference with Curtis Janney, Cortland Bent, and a youngish-oldish, keen-eyed man in a cutaway coat and white waistcoat. This was Henry McCabe of Denver—attorney for the Amalgamated—the shrewdest lawyer west of the Missouri River, and one of the shrewdest east of it. In front of McCabe on the desk was a leather portfolio from which a number of papers protruded. Behind him sat a clerk who had been taking down in shorthand his questions and the replies of two men at the farther end of the table. These men were roughly dressed, and, though at the present moment each of them smoked one of Curtis Janney's remarkable cigars, they sat aloof and uncomfortable on their gilt chairs, assuming attitudes of ease they were far from feeling. One of the strangers was Max Reimer, the man who had discovered the lost vein in the "Lone Tree" mine. The other was Fritz Weyl, one-time barkeeper of Pete Mulrennan's saloon in Mesa City.
McCabe's examination had hardly been concluded when two cards were brought in by a page and handed to Cortland Bent. He glanced at them, and then, without comment, laid them on the table before his father.