[CHAPTER IX]
A SHOW-DOWN
All was quiet at the main camp. Excepting that the division engineers were short-handed, and that Paul Carhart was away, things were going on with some regularity. Scribner rode in late on the second afternoon, and toward the end of the evening, when the office work was done, he and Young Van played a few rubbers of cribbage. The camp went to sleep as usual.
At some time between eleven o’clock and midnight the two young engineers tacitly put up the cards and settled back for a smoke.
“Do you know,” said Young Van, after a silence, “I don’t believe this stuff at all.”
Scribner tipped back, put his feet on the table, puffed a moment, and slowly nodded. “Same here, Gus,” he replied. “Fairy tales, all of it.”
“You can’t settle the ownership of a railroad by civil war.”
“No; but if you can get possession by a five-barrelled bluff, you can give the other fellow a devil of a time getting it back.”