.

CHAPTER XI

I NEVER DID LIKE TO BE BEATEN

Stephen O'Mara found Hardwick Elliott lunching alone in the East Coast
Company's main Morrison office, a big unpainted shack that stood half
lost in a maze of high-piled ties, midway between the saw-mills at the
river edge and the first snarled network of switches converging on one
reddish streak of steel that lanced into the north. With moodily
indifferent interest Elliott scarcely more than glanced up at the
horseman's approach across the open plot of raw earth, hard-packed to a
cement-like surface by the endless passage and repassage of countless
hob-nailed, heavy-booted feet, but with that first glance his forehead
began to smooth a little. His face had lost something of its hint of
gauntness, even before his chief engineer had swung down from the
saddle. Elliott had been exhibiting scant appetite for the cold food
half buried in the pile of papers on his desk top; and though he smiled
his characteristically courteous, mildly abstracted greeting when Steve
loomed in the doorway, his attitude was still very patently that of a
man who attempts to conceal his own perplexities lest they compound
those of another whose perplexities are already more than enough. He
rose and held out a finely tapered hand.

"Now, this is fine," he exclaimed. "This is really fine, Mr. O'Mara.
Rather odd, too--coincidence and that sort of thing, I mean. Because I
was just this instant wondering whether I had better send for you or
wait until you just happened down river again."

In many ways the president of the East Coast Company reminded Steve of
Caleb Hunter, even though there could be no two things more in contrast
than the latter's calm and comfortable bigness and Elliott's thin and
wiry and extremely nervous exterior. It was a similarity due entirely
to the innate honesty of both men--such honesty as makes of every
attempt at dissimulation an assured non-success. And Miss Sarah had
never anticipated her brother's clumsiest finesse with greater ease
than did Steve sense, that afternoon, the weight of worry behind his
employer's first effort at jauntiness. He nodded, hopefully, it seemed.

"Something else gone wrong?" he asked. "Or are you going to tell me
that McLean is still having trouble with that curve of his."

Elliott, too, shook his head, but his negative nod was less brisk, less
hopeful.

"No," he replied. "No, we've got that laid, or at least practically
s