It was at the cost of no little inconvenience that he rushed forward a large body of men and supplies, and began to lay track across the S. R. & N. right-of-way.  If Appleton could hold a hillside, he reasoned, he himself could hold a crossing, if not permanently, at least for a sufficient length of time to serve his purpose.

His action came as a disagreeable surprise to Omar.  These battles for crossings have been common in the history of railroading, and they have not infrequently resulted in sanguinary affrays.  Long after the ties are spiked and the heads are healed, the legal rights involved have been determined, but usually amid such a tangle of conflicting testimony and such a confusion of technicalities as to leave the justice of the final decision in doubt.  In the unsettled conditions that prevailed in the Salmon River valley physical possession of a right-of-way was at least nine-tenths of the law, and O’Neil realized that he must choose between violence and a compromise.  Not being given to compromise, he continued his construction work, and drew closer, day by day, to the point of contact.

Reports came from the front of his opponent’s preparations for resistance.  Gordon had laid several hundred yards of light rails upon his grade, and on these he had mounted a device in the nature of a “go-devil” or skip, which he shunted back and forth by means of a donkey-engine and steel cable.  With this in operation across the point of intersection like a shuttle, interference would be extremely dangerous.  In addition, he had built blockhouses and breast-works of ties, and in these, it was reported, he had stationed the pick of his hired helpers, armed and well provisioned.

Toward this stronghold Murray O’Neil’s men worked, laying his road-bed as straight as an arrow, and as the intervening distance decreased anxiety and speculation at Omar increased.

Among those who hung upon the rumors of the approaching clash with greatest interest was Eliza Appleton.  Since Dan’s departure for the front she had done her modest best to act the part he had forced upon her, and in furtherance of their conspiracy she had urged O’Neil to fulfil his promise of taking her over the work.  She felt an ever-growing curiosity to see those glaciers, about which she had heard so much; and she reflected, though not without a degree of self-contempt, that nothing could be more favorable to her design than the intimacy of several days together on the trail.  Nothing breeds a closer relationship than the open life, nothing brings people more quickly into accord or hopeless disagreement.  Although she had no faintest idea that Murray could or would ever care seriously for her, she felt that there was a bare possibility of winning his transient interest and in that way, perhaps, affording her brother time in which to attain his heart’s desire.  Of course, it was all utterly absurd, yet it was serious enough to Dan; and her own feelings—­well, they didn’t matter.