“That’s right,” returned another,
“but what in hell do you suppose it was all
about? What’s Jeff’s game anyhow?”
EXACTING ROYAL TRIBUTE.
In spite of the optimistic view of the man who said
that Jefferson Worth could build a railroad for Barba
and the South Central District whenever he wished,
there was no little disappointment expressed in Worth’s
town when it became known that the Company town was
to have the road.
When the grading camps had returned to their former
locations and the construction train drew every day
nearer Kingston, with the time approaching when regular
trains with passengers and freight would ply to and
from the Company town, the feeling of discontent in
Barba grew. It even came to be generally understood
throughout the Basin that the whole movement had been
cleverly planned by Jefferson Worth to force The King’s
Basin Land and Irrigation Company to make a large
contribution to the railroad builder’s personal
fortune. The people sensed something in the whole
transaction that they could not clearly grasp, an
intangible, mysterious something, as great as it was
indefinite. They felt blindly that they were being
used without their consent in a game played by these
master financiers, and they resented being sacrificed
as dumb pawns in a move, the purpose of which they
could not know.
In the meantime, while the people were charging him
with selling them out to gain his own ends, the man
whose purpose was known only to himself was putting
into his enterprise the last dollar of his resources,
and another flood season with its appalling danger
was at hand.
Because his laborers on the railroad were not as the
men who built the South Central canals, working for
more than their day’s wage, and because, though
no one knew it, Jefferson Worth’s finances were
so nearly exhausted, work on the road, as on the Company
project, was discontinued for the summer months, to
be resumed in the fall— perhaps.
Barbara again refused to leave her father and in the
close companionship and full understanding of his
daughter, the man, who lived so much alone behind
his gray mask, found inspiration and strength.
The telephone now connected the heading at the river
intake with Kingston, and every hour of those hot
days and nights Jefferson Worth listened for a call
from Willard Holmes, who also had refused to leave
his work, while three of the fastest saddle horses
in the Basin were stabled with El Capitan. Texas,
Abe and Pablo were ready to ride at an instant’s
notice to rally the pioneers, who were developing
their ranches, building their homes and planning their
future unconscious of the real danger that hung over
them.
