“No time at all for the delay:  about three weeks, maybe, for the actual changing of the gauge,” said Ford coolly.

“All right,” laughed Frisbie.  “Only you’ll show us how.  It doesn’t lie in the back of my head—­or in Crapsey’s, unless he’s a better man than I hired him for.”

“Who is Crapsey?”

“He is a Purdue man that I picked up and started out on the branch to make figures on the change of gauge.  The other three parties, under Major Benson, Jack Benson and Roy Brissac, are setting the grade stakes down the Pannikin, and Leckhard is wrestling with the construction material you’ve been dumping in upon us at Saint’s Rest.  That left me short, and I hired Crapsey.”

“Good.  If he is capable, he may do the broadening.  Call him in and set him at it.”

“But, man!  Don’t you want the figures first?”

“My dear Dick!  I’ve had those figures for two years, and there’s nothing very complicated about that part of our problem.  Call your man in and let him attack the thing itself.”

“Everything goes:  you may consider him recalled.  But broadening the Plug Mountain to standard gauge doesn’t put us into Copah this summer, does it?”

“No; our necessities will do that for us.  See here; let me show you.”  Ford took out his note-book and on a blank page of it outlined a rough map, talking as he sketched.  “Three weeks ago you wired me that the Transcontinental people were massing building material at the terminus of their Saguache branch.”

“So I did,” said Frisbie.

“And the day before yesterday you wired again to say that it was apparently a false alarm.  What made you change your mind?”

“They are hauling the stuff away—­over to their Green Butte line, I’m told.”

“Why are they hauling it away?”

“The bluff—­their bluff—­was called.  We had got busy on Plug Pass, and they saw there was no hope of cutting in ahead of us at that point.”

“Exactly.  Now look at this map for a minute.  Here is Saint’s Rest; here is the Copah district; and here is Green Butte, the junction of their narrow gauge with the standard-gauge Salt Lake and Eastern.  If you were on the Transcontinental executive committee and saw an active competing line about to build a standard-gauge railroad through the Copah district and on to a connection with your narrow gauge’s outlet at Green Butte, what would you advise?”

Frisbie nodded.  “It’s easy, when you know how, isn’t it They’ll standardize their narrow gauge to Green Butte, make an iron-clad traffic contract with the S. L & E. to exclude us, and build a branch from Jack’s Canyon, say, up into the Copah country.”  And then in loyal admiration:  “That’s what I call the sure word of prophecy—­your specialty, Stuart.  How many nights’ sleep did you lose figuring that out?”

“Not any, as it happens,” laughed Ford.  “It was a straight tip out of the East.  The plan, just about as you’ve outlined it, was adopted by the Transcontinental powers that be, sitting in New York last week.  By some means unknown to me, Mr. Adair got wind of it, and made a flying trip to Chicago to put me on—­wouldn’t even trust the wire with it.  Now you understand why we’ve got to wake the Copah echoes with a locomotive whistle this season.”