fly, a
lonesome survivor which the unseasonably warm day had reawakened. The
insect's droning wings as it persisted again and again back to the
sandwich plate made the only sound in that big, bare room. "And if
I--if I had to guess----" The hand passed across his eyes now.
"O'Mara, do you know how deeply Mr. Ainnesley and myself are involved
in this prospect?"

After a long search the engineer of the East Coast Company had finally
located his pipe.

"I don't believe I have ever given it much actual thought," he said.
"I never viewed it as any of my affair. But I haven't forgotten the
last time we talked the plans over, that you couldn't go into it to
lose."

Punctiliously Elliott proffered a lighted match for the other's filled
pipe; he lighted a long and thin and very black cigar for himself.
Steve noted then for the first time that the man's hand was shaking a
little.

"Of course," the latter answered quickly. "Of course--of course!" He
seemed groping for a fresh beginning, then gave up suddenly all attempt
at circuity and blurted it out much as though he had lived with the
thought too long to endure it longer alone.

"I'm in up to my last dollar," he stated. "And Ainnesley--why,
Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our
obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests
took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive
the first spike."

When he failed to go on Steve understood that the last sentence had
been a question.

"Mr. Allison, I suppose." His voice became utterly impersonal.
"Without doubt you mean Mr. Allison?"

"They would have laughed at us," the older man came back instantly.
"And what is more, they did! They wouldn't touch the proposition,
until Allison came in with us. And then--but you know what Dexter
Allison has done already in this country. I don't know what he started
with. I do know that all that Ainnesley and I had scraped up between
us looked like a shoe-string to him.

"We couldn't move until he, of his own accord, expressed his enthusiasm
for the plan and asked for a share in the holdings. You know, perhaps,
how he can laugh, too. Well, he laughed that way and confessed that we
had just beaten him to it. He said it would tap a gold mine--this
'strip of steel,' as he called it. He even told us that he'd parallel
our road with a competitor, jokingly to be sure, if we hadn't tied up
the only available an