“Figure on discontinuing it. The grades are steep, the local traffic is light, and the roadbed is in a rotten condition. It needs rebuilding throughout. I’ll make you another proposition. I’ll build the line from Pines to Nugget City myself, if you’ll give us track connection at Copperville and at Pines, and will give us a traffic contract for our own rolling stock on a reasonable basis.”
Again Wilcox looked at the map. The Silverknob and Nugget City road began nowhere and ran nowhere, so far as the larger transportation world was concerned, and it could never figure as a competitor. The hundred miles through the precious natural pass known as Yando Chasm, was not so busy a stretch of road as it was important, and the revenue from the passage of the Silverknob and Nugget City’s trains would deduct considerably from the expense of maintaining that much-prized key to the golden west.
“I’ll take it up with Priestly and Gorman,” promised Wilcox.
“How soon can you let me know?”
“Monday.”
That afternoon saw Allison headed back for New York, and the next morning he popped into the offices of the Pacific Slope and Puget Sound, where he secured a rental privilege to run the trains of the Orange Valley Road into San Francisco, and down to Los Angeles, over the tracks of the P. S. and P. S. The Orange Valley was a little, blind pocket of a road, which made a juncture with the P. S. and P. S. just a short haul above San Francisco, and it ran up into a rich fruit country, but its terminus was far, far away from any possible connection with a northwestern competitor; and that bargain was easy.
That night, Allison, glowing with an exultation which erased his fatigue, dressed to call on Gail Sargent.
CHAPTER VI
THE IMPULSIVE YOUNG MAN FROM HOME
Music resounded in the parlours of Jim Sargent’s house; music so sweet and compelling in its harmony that Aunt Grace slipped to the head of the stairs, to listen in mingled ecstasy and pride. Up through the hallway floated a clear, mellow soprano and a rich, deep baritone, blended so perfectly that they seemed twin tones. Aunt Grace, drawn by a fascination she could not resist, crept down to where she could see the source of the melody. Gail, exceptionally pretty to-night in her simple little dove-coloured gown with its one pink rose, sat at the piano, while towering above her, with his chest expanded and a look of perfect peace on his face, stood the Reverend Smith Boyd.
Enraptured, Aunt Grace stood and listened until the close of the ballad. Leafing through her music for the next treat, Gail looked up at the young rector, and made some smiling remark. Her shining brown hair, waving about her forehead, was caught up in a simple knot at the back, and the delicate colour of her cheeks was like the fresh glow of dawn. The Reverend Smith Boyd bent slightly to answer, and he, too, smiled as he spoke; but as he happened to find himself gazing deep into the brown eyes of Gail, the smile began to fade, and Aunt Grace Sargent, scared, ran back up the stairs and into her own room, where she took a book, and held it in her lap, upside down. The remark which Gail had made was this: