Torrance's pride was becoming a devastating thing; for the moment it had run away with his sense of proportion and obliterated every superstition. As he ran his eye expertly along the level of the steel rails and saw that the trestle did not sink so much as a hair's breadth, he wanted to shout it to the world. Had he not, at unguarded moments, been held down by momentary flashes of the old dreads he would have jumped on his little speeder and chugged away to the west to sing his satisfaction to the hundred and one contractors who were looking for him to open the way to their longest and heaviest trains of supplies, growing longer and heavier as grade crept into the mountains. He wanted to cry to them: "Run your trains--fifty cars at a time, if the rest of the line will bear 'em. As for the Tepee trestle, it's as steady as the mountains--and a blame sight bigger job."
He longed to talk it over with those who had intelligence to size up the task; he wanted to read its due in the great newspapers of the East.
"Some little jerk-water builder puts up a six-penny cement culvert down East and gets half a column. There ain't enough newspapers in the East to do justice to my trestle."
He was as frank in his self-appreciation as in his passions. Now, so far as Big Jim Torrance was concerned, there was not an obstacle in the line from Montreal to the Pacific. And he, Big Jim Torrance, had made the transcontinental possible where others had failed.
It irritated him that his audience was so small. Tressa's confidence was no new thing; she had always believed in him--no more now than before. Conrad still clung to his megrims--phantom fears that had all but faded from Torrance's mind. As for the five hundred brainless creatures to whom his great victory should be a matter of personal pride, it meant no more to them than last year's flowers.
And so Torrance, waving a boisterous hand from the low seat of his speeder to the young pair standing on the steps of the shack, threw open the gas and throbbed down the track to the end-of-steel village to add to his audience two Policemen and a train crew who were already crowing in anticipation of the end.
Adrian Conrad and Tressa saw him go without a worry in the world but that he would return too soon. Where only the three of them lived it was almost impossible for the two lovers to creep away by themselves. Even a sympathetic daddy becomes a burden in the springtime of youth.
As the older man vanished in a whirl of dust from the loose grade, Conrad puffed a long breath, turned to look deep into the girl's eyes, and without a word held out his hand. She took it, and they ran like children across the grade and into the forest.
Not by favour but by a brain to plan and a never-ceasing vigilance did Ignace Koppowski hold the position of local president of the outlaw organisation. His spies were everywhere--or everywhere that mattered, he thought. And spies spied on other spies; that was the vertebrae of the system on which the I.W.W. thrived.
With his own eyes he saw Torrance mount the speeder and drive away; and with a scowl he followed the laughing flight of the girl and her lover.
At last the trestle was unguarded!
A few hasty words to Heppel started him at a lumbering trot for the camp. Ten minutes later a score of men stood within their leader's shack.
Koppy knew he had time. The boss was gone for the evening; and he knew something of lovers' rambles. One gang he despatched into the forest after Tressa and Conrad. A second crawled in detachments through the woods to the powder cache near Conrad's shack. Heppel had charge of the first, Werner of the other. Werner, given his orders, demurred.
"Thanks, Koppy, but I don't think it's a thing I couldn't do without."
"Five men will do," said Koppy.
"Five men's six too many," grumbled Werner. "Why d'you pick yours truly for all the soft jobs?"
"You are honoured. Only three of you--"
"I'll give up my share of the honour to Morani's; he's fair bubbling for a chance to wipe out the miss he made with his dirk the other night. I'm not a bit resentful. I don't care if I never see the boss again. I resign in favour of Chico."
"I need Morani."
"Not half as bad as I do, pompous one. Look here, old chap, this is a big job, ain't it, a real big thing?"
"Perhaps the end of everything," agreed the underforeman solemnly.
"That's why I'm not hankering for it," said Werner under his breath. "And the fellow who carries it through is going to wear a bigger jewel in his crown, so to speak?" he asked aloud.
Koppy glowered.
"Then why not cop it yourself, old man? My crown's getting a bit top-heavy already. You got a finer sense of balance, and your neck's stronger. Them bolts I drew on the trestle pretty near gave me a headache--not to say as near as you came to it when the boss got swinging," he added with a leer. "Hugo Werner never was ambitious."
Koppy raised himself haughtily. "I order," he rapped.
"Too darn much for my skin," grumbled Werner. "It's a bad habit to get into--for the other fellow."
But he set about obeying, for therein lay the choice of two evils. Five experienced "r............
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