But Mary Temple did not reveal to Artie the full details of this tragic story. There was something about the expression on her father’s face that had always lingered in her memory; an expression so fraught with anxiety and keen disappointment, that a lapse of ten years had not obliterated the impression one bit.
She was quite young then but she had not forgotten her father’s evident apprehension for those lost men.
Her mother then told her in full how it had all happened and what a financial loss it had been to the railroad with which Mr. Temple was connected. It meant a terrific loss to him at the time, being one of the largest stockholders, but being the man he was he took his loss cheerfully, seeming to be more concerned with the surveyors’ disappearance, than with his own losses.
So it happened that no one but the Temple family and Uncle Jeb Rushmore knew the true details of this unsolved mystery.
It seems that Mr. Temple undertook this trip to Eagle City for the sole purpose of looking over this mountain pass, that was to give way to modern engineering and serve its end as a branch line for the railroad.
The surveyors had secured a sort of agreement from one Ezra Knapp, a farmer, whose property ran parallel to Mr. Temple’s and which he wanted to procure so that the thing could be accomplished by extending the branch line through the distant pass and so on down the ravine.
After the agreement had entered their possession the surveyors wired Mr. Temple for one of his representatives to come without delay and close the contract.
He decided then to go himself, not only for the benefit of his fellow-stockholders but for his own personal satisfaction.
Arriving at Eagle City, he found to his dismay that there wasn’t any hotel in the immediate vicinity.
The station agent directed him to the general store about procuring some conveyance to ride in to the Inn, which was about fifteen miles distant and on the way to Eagle Pass, which was Mr. Temple’s destination.