"Sunsets pass—they're symbols of the brevity of things beautiful——"
"But the night is long," he murmured. "So long, and so dark."
CHAPTER VIII
THE BRUSH
Jeff Wray was learning many things. The arrival of Lawrence Berkely on the scene had at first seemed rather alarming. Several wires in cipher before Larry reached New York had apprised Jeff of an uncertain state of mind in members of the directorate of the Denver and Western Railroad Company. Collins, Hardy, and even Jim Noakes had been approached by representatives of the Chicago and Utah with flattering offers for their interests in the D. & W., and Berkely reported them on the horns of a dilemma. Collins and Hardy were big owners of land which lay along the trunk line and were dependent on that company for all facilities for moving their wheat and other crops. It had not always been easy to get cars to haul their stuff to market, and this fall they only got their hay and potatoes in by a dispensation from the men higher up. Noakes, as Jeff well knew, owned stock in the through line, but the showing of the Saguache Mountain Development Company for the year had been so strong that he had felt sure his associates would see the importance of keeping their interests intact, temporizing, where they could, with the Denver crowd, who had it in their power to threaten his connections at Saguache.
Mulrennan was wiring Jeff, too—copiously. There was an election pending in Kinney, and the Denver crowd had advanced a candidate for judge in opposition to the party with which Pete was affiliated. Other reports both in New York and from the West indicated a strong pressure from the East on the officers of the D. & W. Berkely viewed all these indications of a concerted movement against Jeff's railroad with increasing dismay and lost no time in giving him his opinion as to the possible outcome of the raid.
But Jeff apparently was losing no sleep over the situation. He was fully aware that the whole movement had originated in New York, and that Cornelius Bent and his crowd were back of it. He knew, too, that the Amalgamated Reduction Company wanted his new smelter. Long ago he had foreseen this possibility and had laid his own plans accordingly. The Denver and Saguache was his. With Noakes, Collins, and Hardy, he had a control of the Denver and Western, but their possible defection, which he had also foreseen, had made other plans necessary. Three months before he came East he had unobtrusively secured through other persons a right of way from Saguache to Pueblo, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles. The line of this survey was well to the southward and would open up a country occupied only by small settlers under the Homestead laws. He had turned the organization of the Development Company loose for two months on that vast tract of land, and had, at a reasonably small expense, secured by purchase or long-time options the most valuable land along his new line. His engineers were Germans, imported for the work, who had no affiliations with other roads, and his plans had so far worked out to a T. He had also worked out (on paper) an irrigation scheme for the whole proposition.
At Pueblo the new road would connect with the Denver and California, a line which had no connection with the Chicago and Utah, and which had even been recently engaged in a rate war with the other roads to the coast. Its officers were friendly, and Wray's plans had all been worked out in their confidence and with their approval. Indeed, a good part of his backing had been furnished by capitalists in San Francisco.
Jeff felt sure that the first move to capture the D. & W. was only a bluff, and in his conferences with General Bent, Janney, and McIntyre, had played a waiting game. The "Daisy" was now a producer—not a producer like the "Lone Tree"—but it was paying, and the "Comet," a new prospect that had been opened farther south, was doing a business of a hundred to the ton. His stamps were working night and day, and the smelter was doing its share in Wray's triumphant progress. All his other plans were working out, and the longer he could wait the more formidable he could make himself as an adversary. He knew that the crux of the situation was the ambition of the Amalgamated Reduction Company. They controlled every smelting concern in three states, and Wray's big plant was a thorn in their side. By waiting, Jeff hoped that he could make them show their hands, so he made no attempt to force an issue, being content to play the part they themselves had assigned him. Their hospitality, his welcome into their exclusive set, his use of their clubs (to two of which he had been proposed for membership), the business associations they were planning for him, did little to convince Jeff of the sincerity of their attentions. But he acted the dupe with a good grace, with one eye to windward, greatly amused at their friendliness, which, while it failed to flatter, gave him an increasing sense of the importance of his mission. General Bent had intimated that within a week or so he would be in a position to make a definite proposition for his railroad, which, of course, meant the absorption of Wray's plant into the Trust. Financially, there were great possibilities in a friendly association with these men.
They were closely in touch with No. — Broadway and, if they chose, could point the way to power such as he had never dreamed of. But in his heart he mistrusted them. He thought of Mrs. Rumsen's words of warning, and he knew that what she said was true. They would not spare him if he offered them a chance which would give them a command of the situation. Well, they hadn't command of it yet, and he knew he held some cards which they had never seen. If they continued to weave their web as they had begun it, there would still be time to side-step.