EMPIRE BUILDERS

By

FRANCIS LYNDE

Author of
The Quickening, The Grafters
A Fool for Love, etc.

With Illustrations by

JAY HAMBIDGE

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

1907
August

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.

CONTENTS

"I wont attempt to apologise—it's beyond all that"

EMPIRE BUILDERS

I.

A MASTER OF MEN

Engine Number 206, narrow gauge, was pushing, or rather failing to push, the old-fashioned box-plow through the crusted drifts on the uptilted shoulder of Plug Mountain, at altitude ten thousand feet, with the mercury at twelve below zero. There was a wind—the winter day above timber-line without its wind is as rare as a thawing Christmas—and it cut like knives through any garmenting lighter than fur or leather. The cab of the 206 was old and weather-shaken, and Ford pulled the collar of his buffalo coat about his ears when the grunting of the exhaust and the shrilling of the wheels on the snow-shod rails stopped abruptly.

"Gar-r-r!"