e heights to fill the dreadful vacuum,
was still rocking the stopped car when Frisbie climbed nimbly to the
railed rear platform and swung his lantern to light the faces of the
three men braced in the doorway.

"A close call, gentlemen," was his only comment; and then he appealed
briefly to Ford for orders.

"Back us down slowly," said Ford shortly, "and follow with your train.
We may need the men."

Frisbie went forward through the wrecked private car, returning
presently to flag Gallagher along with the lantern swung over the
railing. Down in the valley of the Pannikin the heavy, sickening fumes
of the burned explosives hung in the air, and when the car swung in on
the straight line the red glare of a wrecked and burning oil tank
lighted the scene.

The camp site was blankly unrecognizable. Where the ten-tracked yard had
been there was a vast depression, half-filled with distorted steel and
debris indescribable, twisted iron and splintered wood, with the water
from the river pouring into it. The commissary buildings and the
surrounding bunk-shanties were gone, swept away as with the stroke of a
mighty broom; and the trees on the hill-sides above were scorched and
shriveled as if a forest fire had blasted them.

Frisbie was the first to speak after he had flagged Gallagher to a stand
on the farthermost edge of the devastation.

"Any use to turn out the crew and hunt for them?" he asked.

Ford shook his head.

"No. Leave M'Grath and a few others to stand guard and to flag the
incoming steel trains, and let's get out of this. I'm sick; and so is
Mr. Adair."

XXVI

THE STAR OF EMPIRE

A week, the most strenuous week in Copah's history, had passed, and
still the president's party delayed its return to what Miss Priscilla
Van Bruce constantly referred to as "civilization"; though the Farthest
West has always been slow to admit the derogatory comparison which the
word implies.

During the strenuous week much had happened, and much more was scheduled
to happen. For one twenty-four-hour day the ex-speculator in Mr.
Colbrith held out against the sharp attacks of the reawakened lust of
conquest. Then, from Jack's Canyon on the Transcontinental, from
men-clustered construction trains on the extension, over the passes from
Summit Lakes, and across the brown plains from Green Butte, poured the
army of gold-seekers, and the president was swept away and into the very
vortex of the stock-jobbing whirlpool.