“Mine,” Rondeau answered. “M'sieur Sexton I have tie like one leetle pig and lock her in her office. I work now for M'sieur.”
And he did. He waited not for a confirmation from his new master but proceeded to direct operations like the born driver and leader of men that he was. With his late employer's gear he fastened to the old castings and the boiler, lifted them with the derrick on the wrecking-car, and swung them up and around onto the flat-cars. By the middle of the afternoon the crossing was once more clear. Then the Cardigan crew fell upon it while Jules Rondeau ran the train back to the Laguna Grande yards, dismissed his crew, returned to the mill-office, and released the manager.
“You'll pay through the nose for this, you scoundrel,” Sexton whimpered. “I'll fix you, you traitor.”
“You feex nothing, M'sieur Sexton,” Rondeau replied imperturbably. “Who is witness Jules Rondeau tie you up? Somebody see you, no? I guess you don' feex me. Sacre! I guess you don' try.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
Colonel Pennington's discovery at San Francisco that Bryce Cardigan had stolen his thunder and turned the bolt upon him, was the hardest blow Seth Pennington could remember having received throughout thirty-odd years of give and take. He was too old and experienced a campaigner, however, to permit a futile rage to cloud his reason; he prided himself upon being a foeman worthy of any man's steel.
On Tuesday he returned to Sequoia. Sexton related to him in detail the events which had transpired since his departure, but elicited nothing more than a noncommittal grunt.
“There is one more matter, sir, which will doubtless be of interest to you,” Sexton continued apologetically. “Miss Sumner called me on the telephone yesterday and instructed me formally to notify the board of directors of the Laguna Grande Company of a special meeting of the board, to be held here at two o'clock this afternoon. In view of the impossibility of communicating with you while you were en route, I conformed to her wishes. Our by-laws, as you know, stipulate that no meeting of the board shall be called without formal written notice to each director mailed twenty-four hours previously.”