The Road Builders

It could not be supposed that the coming of fifteen hundred men to Red Hills, their pockets lined with the earnings of those last irresistible weeks, should pass without a great effort on the part of the local population to empty these pockets promptly and thoroughly. If the two engineers had looked about more sharply in the course of their walk, they would have seen more than one familiar face. It was, indeed, a day to be remembered in Red Hills; there had been no such wholesale contribution to local needs since the first ramshackle frame building rose from the dust. Bartenders were busy; and deft-fingered, impassive gentlemen from Chicago, and New Orleans, and Denver, and San Francisco were hard at work behind green tables. All was quiet so far. The laborers were so skilfully distributed that no green table was without its professional gambler; and sweltering in the heat, gulping down the ever ready fluids, they went gayly, gloomily, angrily, defiantly on, thumbing the dirty cards and relinquishing their earnings. All was still quiet, for the business of the day was carried on in back rooms and on upper floors. The uproar would not begin for a few hours yet, and would hardly reach its full strength before dark.

Among those to whom music and feminine charms, such as they were, outweighed the delights of the green table was Charlie the cook. He sat at an open window, upstairs, where he could look down at the sleepy street and at the front of the Acme Hotel, opposite. At first he had been content to make out what he could of the scene through the cheesecloth sash curtains, but, under the mellowing influence of a rapid succession of bottles, he had drawn the curtains, and now sat with his knees against the sill, smiling down in a ruddy, benevolent fashion on everybody and everything below. The parlor at his back was filled with workmen and their companions. He had seen the engineers walk down the street, and had smiled in genial fashion, though aware that they had not observed him. Now he saw them returning, and he was ready, undaunted, to greet them again.

Then something happened. The door leading to the bar of the Acme Hotel suddenly opened, and a hulking figure of a man appeared on the broad step. He was half drunk, and he carried a revolver in his hand. Behind him, crowding out to see the fun, came a dozen men. Charlie saw this, and, without in the slightest relaxing his genial smile, he drew out one of his own revolvers and held it carelessly before him with the muzzle resting on the window sill. Never for an instant did he take his good-natured, bloodshot eyes from the man across the street.

The engineers were drawing rapidly nearer. Young Van was the first to take in the situation, and he spoke in a low, quick voice, hardly moving his lips: —

“Don’t look up or start, Mr. Carhart – but Jack Flagg is standing in front of that hotel on the left, and he looks as if he meant to shoot. What do you think we had better do? I am not armed.”

“Neither am I,” Carhart replied. “Don’t pay any attention to him.”

That was all that was said. The two engineers swung along without a sign of faltering. Jack Flagg slowly raised his weapon and took deliberate aim at Paul Carhart. Still the two came on, not wholly able to conceal their sense of the situation, but, rather, regardless of it. On Carhart’s face there was an expression of stern contempt; Young Van was pale and his eyes were fixed straight before him.

At this point it seemed as if the strain must break one way or the other. The men were not ten yards apart – in another moment it would be less than two. A little gasp of admiration came from the watching groups. Flagg heard this, and his hand wavered, but he recovered and took a short step forward.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a low whistle. Flagg started, and looked around.

Again came the low whistle. This time Flagg looked up, and caught his first sight of Charlie in the window, and hesitated. Charlie had not raised his revolver, – the muzzle still rested easily on the sill, – but it was pointing straight at Jack Flagg’s heart. Flagg lowered his weapon a little way, then looked as if he wished to raise it again, but on second thoughts this seemed hardly wise, for Charlie was shaking his head in gentle disapproval. Then this incident, which had shaved close to tragedy, suddenly ran off into farce. Flagg pocketed his revolver, muttered something that nobody understood, and disappeared through the bar-room door; and after a long breath of mingled relief and disappointment, somebody laughed aloud.

As for Charlie, he turned, still playing with his revolver, and looked about the room. “Why!” he exclaimed. “Why! Where’s the ladies?”

The engineers walked steadily up the street and turned into the hotel. Then Young Van weakened, staggered to a chair, and sat limp and white. “I told you,” he said breathlessly, “I told you I was – no good.”

Carhart, before replying, looked at his watch, and his hand shook as he did so. “Brace up, Gus,” he said. “Brace up. I start East in an hour or so, and you are coming with me, you know.”