The Road Builders

irty years back-who would have insisted that the letters "S. & W." meant "Sherman and Western." But every on

part, everybody knew that old De Reamer had been forced to abandon the construction work on the Red Hills extension, after building fully five-sixths of the distance. The hard times had, of course, something to do with that,-roads were going under all through the West; receiverships were quite the common thing,-but De Reamer and the S. & W. did not seem to revive so quickly as certain other lines. Thi

mmodore began building southwestward, in the general direction of Red Hills. As usual when the big men are playing for position, the public and the wise-acres, even Wall Street, were mystified. For the S. & W. was so obviously the best and shortest eastern connection for the C. & S. C.,-the

y before dropping. Other mysterious things were going on. Suddenly De Reamer reappeared in the Southwest, and that most welcome sign of vitality, money,-red gold corpuscles,-began to flow through the arteries of the S. & W. "system." The construction work started up, on rush orders. Paul Carhart was specially engaged to take out a force and complete the tr

the Rio Grande fight (though he would have managed some things differently, no

rtable. Everybody, from the chief down, had shed coat and waistcoat before the ragged skyline of Sherman slipped out of view behind the yellow pine trees. The car swayed and lurched so violently that it was impossible to stand in the aisle without support. As the hours

gray chaparral and sage-brush which they would find about them in the morning,-if the train didn't break down,-when he saw

w the old gentleman would pull it off in time, but I ne

anced up i

ave the money to carry this work through. Even when Commodore Durfee started building for Red Hills, he

art, "I didn't

ew he'd have to corner Daniel De Reamer first. If he didn't, the old gentleman would manufacture shares by the hundred thous

shook

rough Paradis

adise to Total Wreck. But I didn't know it h

em, as P. S. directors, to lease the short line to themselves as S. & W. directors. Then the S.& W. directors pay the P. S. directors-only the

the open door and windows was tainted with the gases of the locomotive, an

unctions and court orders. He did it thorough: restrained the S. & W. board from issuing any more stock, or from completing any of the transactions on hand, and temporarily suspended the old gentleman and Mr. Chambers, pending an investigation of their accounts, and ordered 'em to return to the treas

d up the S. & W. pretty

tle among themselves. Then they issued ten million dollars in convertible bonds to a dummy, representing themselves, turned 'em right into stock,-and tangled that transaction up so nobody in earth or heaven will ever know just exactly what was done,-and sold 'most seventy thousand shares of it to Commodore Durfee before he had a glimmer

mer beat him,"

im?-I w

ly. Commodore Durfee isn'

n than this one. Daniel De Reamer was his king, and his king could do no wrong. "Not that they didn't have some excitement getting away," he continued. "They say,-mind, I don't know this, but they say that Mr. De Reamer's secretary, young Crittenden, crossed the ferry in a cab with four million five hundred thousand dollars in bills-just tied up rough in bundles so they could b

he said, "If you have that straight, Tiffany, it's undoubtedly the worst defeat Commodore D

lied, "but I'll bet prop

gle track. It would be more serious; for not only must food, and in the desert, water, be brought out over the line, but also the vast quantity of material needed in the work. It would be the business of Peet, as the working head

imitive wooden trestles. There would be no masonry, excepting the abutments of the La Paz bridge,-which masonry, or rather the stone for it, was about the only material

nce. He should have to send a man out there with a long wagon train of materials, and with orders to have the bridge ready when the track should reach the river. He knew just the man-John B. Flint, who built the Desplaines bridge for the three I's. He had not heard from John since the doctors had condemned his lungs, and ordered him to a sanatorium in the Adirondacks, and John had co

e National Committee of his party,-that General Carrington was sitting on the piazza of his country house in California, smoking good cigars and talking horse and waiting to see whether he should gobble Durfee or De Reamer, or both of them. For the general, too, was represented on the directorate of the Sherman and Western; and it was an open question whether his minority directors would contin

a quiet man, given more to study than