The Short Line War

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Produced by Eric Eldred, Beth Trapaga
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE SHORT LINE WAR

By

MERWIN-WEBSTER

[Samuel Merwin]

CHAPTER

I. JIM WEEKS
II. MR. MCNALLY GOES TO TILLMAN CITY
III. POLITICS AND OTHER THINGS
IV. JIM WEEKS CLOSES IN
V. TUESDAY EVENING
VI. JUDGE BLACK
VII. BETWEEN THE LINES
VIII. JUDGE GREY
IX. THE MATTER OF POSSESSION
X. SOMEBODY LOSES THE BOOKS
XI. A POLITICIAN
XII. KATHERINE
XIII. TRAIN NO. 14
XIV. A CAPTURE AT BRUSHINGHAM
XV. DEUS EX MACHINA
XVI. MCNALLY'S EXPEDIENT
XVII. IN THE DARK
XVIII. THE COMING OF DAWN
XIX. KATHERINE DECIDES
XX. HARVEY
XXI. THE TILLMAN CITY STOCK
XXII. THE WINNING OF THE ROAD
XXIII. THE SURRENDER

CHAPTER I

JIM WEEKS

James Weeks came of a fighting stock.

His great-grandfather, Ashbel Weeks, was born in Connecticut in 1748; he
migrated to New York in '70, and settled among the Oneida Indians on the
Upper Mohawk. It was the kind of life he was built for; he sniffed at
danger like a young horse catching a breath off the meadows. He did not
take the war fever until St. Leger came up the valley, when he fought
beside Herkimer in the ambush on Oriskany Creek. He joined the army of the
North, and remained with it through the long three years that ended at
Yorktown; then he married, and returned to his home among the
half-civilized Oneidas.

His oldest son, Jonathan, was born in '90. He grew like his father in
physique and temperament, and his migrating disposition led him to
Kentucky. The commercial instinct, which had never appeared in his father,
was strong in him, so that he turned naturally to trading. He began in a
small way, but he succeeded at it, and amassed what was then considered a
large fortune.

In 1823 he moved to Louisville, and interested himself in promoting the
steamboat traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As the business
developed, Jonathan Weeks's fortune grew with it. His only son, who was
born in 1815, was sent to Harvard; he spent a very merry four years there,
and a good deal of money. He fell in love in the meantime, and married
immediately after his graduation. Not many months after his marriage he
was killed by the accidental discharge of a rifle, and, shortly after
this, his widow died in giving birth to a son.

The care of the child devolved entirely upon Jonathan, the grandfather. He
assumed it gladly, even eagerly, and his whole existence soon centred
about the boy, and James--for so they had named him--became more to him
than his son had ever been. It grew evident that he would have the Weeks
build, and, by the time he was fifteen, he was as lean, big-boned, awkward
a hobbledehoy as the old man could wish. His grandfather's wealth did not
spoil him in the least; he was the kind of a boy it would have been
difficult to spoil.

He had no fondness for books, but it is to be doubted if that was much of
a grief to his grandfather. He was good at mathematics,--he used to work
out problems for fun,--and an excellent memory for certain kinds of
details enabled him to master geography without difficulty. The great
passion of his boyhood was for the big, roaring, pounding steamboats that
went down to New Orleans. His ambition, like that of nearly every boy who
lived in sight of those packets, was to be a river pilot, and he was
nearing his majority before he outgrew it.

He was twenty-two years old when he fell in love with Ethel Harvey. She
was nineteen when she came home from the Eastern school where she had
spent the past five years, and she burst upon Jim in the first glory of
her womanhood. When she had grown an old woman the young girls still
envied her beauty, and wondered what it must have been in its first bloom.
Small wonder that Jim fell in love with her; it was inevitable.

He first saw her, after her return, on a bright June morning as he was
strolling down the path from his grandfather's house to the street. She
was riding her big bay mare at a smart gallop, but she pulled up short at
sight of him, and drawing off a riding gauntlet held out her hand. From
that moment Jim loved her. The old man was coming down the path, but
seeing them there together, he paused, for they made a striking picture.
Her little silk hat sat daintily on her hair, which would be rebellious
and fluffy; the dark green riding habit with its tight sleeves revealed
the perfect lines of her lithe figure, which swayed gracefully as the mare
pawed and backed and plunged, impatient for the morning gallop. She seemed
quite indifferent to the protests of the big brute, and talked merrily to
Jim, who stood looking up at her in bewildered admiration. At last she
shook hands again and rode away, and Jonathan Weeks walked back into the
house with a satisfied smile. "They'll do," he said.

It looked as though they would. Through the short happy weeks that
followed, Ethel did not ride alone. Together they explored the country
lanes or left them for a dash straight across the fields, taking anything
that chanced to be in the way. In their impromptu races, which were
frequent, Ethel almost always won; for racer though he was, Jim's sorrel
found the two hundred and eight pounds he carried too much of a handicap.
So the days went by, and though nothing was said about it, they talked to
each other, and thought of each other, as lovers do.

But all the while there was growing in Ethel's mind an intuition that
something was wrong. She had not an analytical mind, but she became
convinced that though she might learn to understand Jim, he could never
understand her. It was not only that she was the first woman who had come
into his life, though that had much to do with it. But he was a man
without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and
literally, he could not understand a whim. And when she saw how her pretty
feminine inconsistencies puzzled him, and how he failed to understand the
whimsical, butterfly fancies she confided to him, she would cry with
vexation, and think she hated him; but then the knightly devotion of his
big heart would win her back again, and her tears would cease to burn her
cheeks, and she would tell herself how unworthy she was of the love of a
man like that. But the trouble was still there; Ethel grew sad, and Jim,
more than ever, failed to understand. The old man watched, but said
nothing.

One evening Jim took her out on the river. It was the summer of '61, when
the North was learning how bitter was the task it had to accomplish.
Kentucky was disputed ground and feeling ran high there; little else was
thought of. Jim had been talking to her for some time on this
all-absorbing topic while she sat silent in the stern, her hand trailing
in the water. Finally he asked why she was so quiet.

"I think this war is very stupid," she said. "Let's talk about"--here she
paused and her eyes followed the big night boat which was churning its way
down the river--"about paddle-wheels, or port lights, or something."

Jim said nothing; he had nothing to say. She went on:--

"Don't you think it is tiresome to always mean what you say? I hate to
tell the truth. Anybody can do that."

"I thought," said Jim, "that you believed in sincerity."

"Oh, of course I do," she exclaimed impatiently, and again Jim was silent.

The next day he took her for a drive and it was then that the end came.
They had been having a glorious time, for the rapid motion and the bright
sunshine had driven away her mood of the night before and she was
perfectly happy; Jim was happy in her happiness. The half-broken colts
were fairly steady and he let her drive them and turned in his seat so
that he could watch her. As he looked at her there, her head erect, her
elbows squared, her bright eyes looking straight out ahead, Jim fell
deeper than ever in love with her. The colts felt a new and unrestraining
hand on the reins, and the pace increased rapidly. Jim noted it.

"You'd better pull up a little," he said. "They'll be getting away from
you."

"I love to go this way," she replied, and over the reins she told the
colts the same thing, in a language they understood. Suddenly one of them
broke, and in a second both were running.

"Pull 'em in," said Jim, sharply. "Here--give me the reins."

"I can hold them," she protested wilfully.

Then, without hesitation and with perfectly unconscious brutality, Jim
tore the reins out of her hands, and addressed himself to the task of
quieting the horses.

It was not easy, but he was cool and strong, and the horses knew he was
their master; nevertheless it was several minutes before he had them on
their legs again. During that time neither had spoken; then Jim waited for
her to break the silence. He was somewhat vexed, for he thought she had
deliberately exposed herself to an unnecessary peril. But she said nothing
and they finished their drive in silence.

At her door he sprang out to help her to alight, but she ignored his
offered aid. Though she turned away he saw that there were tears in her
eyes.

"Ethel," he said softly, but she faced him in a flash of anger.

"Don't speak to me. Oh--how I hate you!"

Jim seemed suddenly to grow bigger. "Will you please tell me if you mean
that?" he said slowly.

"I mean just that," she answered. "I--I hate you." She stood still a
moment; then she seemed to choke, and turning, fled into the house.

To Jim's mind that was the end of it. She had told him that she hated him.
The fact that there had been a catch in her voice as she said it weighed
not at all with him; that was an unknown language. So he took her
literally and exactly and went away by himself to think it over.

He was late for dinner that night, and when he came in his grandfather was
pacing the dining room. But Jim wasted no words in explanation.

"Grandfather," he said, "I think if you won't need me for a while I'll
enlist to-morrow."

"I can get along all right," said the old man, "but I'm sorry you're
going."

The older man was looking at the younger one narrowly. Suddenly and
bluntly he asked:--

"Is anything the matter with you and Ethel Harvey?"

Jim nodded, and without further invitation or questioning he related the
whole incident. "That's all there is to it," he concluded. "The team had
bolted and she wouldn't give me the reins; so I took them away from her
and pulled in the horses. There was nothing else to do."

"And then she said she hated you," added Jonathan, musingly. "I reckon she
hasn't much sense."

"It ain't that," Jim answered quickly. "She's got sense enough. The
trouble with her is she's too damned plucky."

A few days later he was a private in the Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers. He
made a good soldier, for not only did he love danger as had his
great-grandfather before him, but he had nerves which months of inaction
could not set jangling, and a constitution which hardship and privation
could not undermine.

The keenest delight he had ever known came with his first experience under
fire. He felt his breath coming in long deep inhalations; he could think
faster and more clearly than at other times, and he knew that his hands
were steady and his aim was good. Somehow it seemed that years of life
were crowded into those few minutes, and he retired reluctantly when the
order came.

His regiment was in the Army of the Potomac, and the story of its waiting
and blundering and magnificent fighting need not be told again in these
pages. Jim was one of thousands of brave, intelligent fighters who did not
rise to the command of a division or even of a regiment. He was a
lieutenant in Company E when the Nineteenth marched down the Emmittsburg
Pike, through Gettysburg and out to the ridge beyond, to hold it until
reenforcements should come.

They fought there during four long hours, until the thin line of blue
could hold no longer, and gray ranks under Ewell and Fender had enveloped
both flanks. Then sullenly they came back through the town, still firing
defiantly, and cursing the help that had not come. It was during this
retreat that Jim was hit, but he did not drop. Somehow--though as in a
dream--he kept with his regiment, and it was not until they were rallied
in the cemetery on the other side of the town that he pitched forward and
lay quite still.

Everybody knows how the Eleventh Corps held the cemetery through the two
bloody days that followed. But Jim was unconscious of it all, for he lay
on a cot in the Sanitary Commission tent, raving in delirium. And the
surgeons and nurses looked at him gravely and wondered with every hour why
he did not die.

But, as one of his comrades had said, "it took a lot of pounding to lick
Jim Weeks," and in a surprisingly short time he was strong enough to be
taken home.

When he first saw his grandfather he was dimly conscious of a change in
him, and as he grew stronger and better able to observe closely he became
surer of it. Jonathan had been a young old man when Jim went away; now he
looked every one of his seventy-three years, and instead of the tireless
energy of former times Jim noted a listlessness hard to understand.

One night after both had gone to bed Jim heard his grandfather groping his
way down the stairs and out upon the veranda. He listened intently until
he heard the creak of the rocking chair, which told him that the old man
was visiting again with old friends and old fancies. The slow rhythm
lulled Jim into a doze, and then into sleep. He awakened with a start; his
pioneer blood made him a light sleeper, and he knew that the old man could
not have got upstairs and past his door without waking him. "He must have
gone to sleep down there," thought Jim, and rising he went down to the
veranda. Jonathan had gone to sleep, but the black cob pipe was clenched
between rigid jaws; his sightless eyes were open and seemed to be looking
at the stars.

At first Jim felt that sails, helm, and compass had been swept clean
away, but he was strong enough to recover his bearings quickly. His
grandfather's death marked an end and a beginning, and just as a needle
when a magnet is taken away swings unerringly into the line of force of
the original magnet, the earth, so Jim's life swung to a new direction.
There was no one whose life could direct or influence his, and alone he
started on what business men of the next generation knew as his career.

The war had lessened but not destroyed Jonathan's fortune, and it went
without reservation to Jim. The times offered golden opportunities to a
man with ready money and good business training, and his success was
almost inevitable. His life from this time was the logical working out of
what he had in him.

He turned naturally to the railroad business, and those who know the
history of Western railroads from '65 to '90 will understand what a
field it was for a man who was at once fearless and level-headed. The
craze for construction and then the equally mad competition did not
confuse him, they simply gave him opportunities. When the reaction
against the railroads set in, and the Granger movement wrecked nearly
all the Western roads, Jim bowed to the inevitable, but he saved
himself--no one knew just how--and when the State legislators were over
their midsummer madness he was again in the field, and again succeeding.

With the details of these struggles we are not concerned. The "inside"
history of many of them will never be known; in almost every case it
differs materially from the story which appeared in the papers. Jim became
famous and was libelled and flattered, respected and abused, by turns; but
always he was feared. He was supposed to be dishonest, and it is true he
did not scruple to use his enemies' weapons; but at directors' meetings it
was the interest of the stockholders that he fought for.

Men wondered at his success, and over their cigars gravely discussed the
reasons for it. Some said it was sheer good luck that turned what he
touched to gold, some laid it to his start, and others to his cool,
dispassionate strategy. To some extent it was all of these things; but
more than anything else he had won as a bulldog does, by hanging on. Often
he had beaten better strategists simply by keeping up the fight when by
all the rules he was beaten. For as the comrade of long ago had said, "it
took a lot of pounding to lick Jim Weeks."

CHAPTER II

MR. McNALLY GOES TO TILLMAN CITY

It was Monday morning, September 23d. The telephone bell on the big
mahogany desk rang twice before Jim Weeks laid down the sheet of paper he
was scrutinizing and picked up the receiver.

"Hello! Oh, that you, Fox? Yes--Yes. Hold on! Give me that name again.
Frederick McNally. Dartmouth Building, did you say? Yes. Thank you.
Good-by."

The bell tinkled again and Jim swung round in his chair.

There was another desk in the room, where sat a young man busy over a pile
of letters. He was private secretary to a man who was president of one
railroad and director in others, and his life was not easy. The letters he
was working over were with one exception addressed to the Hon. James
Weeks, Washington Building, Chicago. The exception was a pale blue note
addressed to Mr. Harvey West, and the young man had put that at the bottom
of the pile and was working down to it.

The elder man spoke. "West," he said, "Fox has just telephoned me that
he's found out who's been buying M. & T. stock. It's Frederick McNally;
he's in the Dartmouth Building. He isn't doing it on his own hook, but I
don't know who he is doing it for. Somebody wants that stock mighty bad.
There isn't a great deal of it lying around, though."

"Do you think that Thompson--" began the secretary.

"Thompson would be glad to see me out and himself in," said Jim Weeks,
"and he leads Wing and Powers around by the nose, but he can't swing
enough stock to hurt anything at next election. I don't believe it's he
that's buying. Thompson hasn't got sand enough for that. He'll never
fight."

There was a moment's pause. Jim walked over to the ticker and looked back
along the ribbon of paper. "It's quoted at 68-1/2 this morning," he said,
"but no sales to amount to anything."

"You might go over and talk to Wing," he went on. "You can find out
anything he knows if you go at it right. I don't believe there's anything
there. However, I'd like to know just what they are doing. You'd better do
it now. Send Pease in when you go out, will you?"

Harvey slipped the blue envelope from the bottom of the pile of letters,
called the stenographer, and started out. He read the note while he was
waiting for the elevator.

The M. & T. is a local single-track road, about two hundred miles long,
running between the cities of Manchester and Truesdale. The former is on
the main line of the Northern, and the latter on the C. & S.C., both of
which are trunk lines from Chicago to the West. The M. & T. was not a
money-making affair; it had cost a lot of money, its stock was away
down, and it trembled on the brink of insolvency until Jim Weeks took
hold of it. He put money into it, straightened out its tangled affairs,
and incidentally made some enemies in the board of directors. There were
coal mines on the line near Sawyerville, which were operated in a
desultory way, but they never amounted to much until some more of Jim
Weeks's money went into them, and then they began to pay. This made the
M. & T. important, especially to the C. & S.C. people, who immediately
tried to make arrangements with Jim for the absorption of the M. & T. by
their line. C. & S.C. had a bad name. There were many shady operations
associated with its management, and Jim decided to have as little to do
with it as possible, so the attempt apparently was abandoned.

The stock of the M. & T. was held largely by men who lived along the line
of the road. Tillman City and St. Johns each held large blocks; they had
got a special act of legislature to allow them to subscribe for it. These
stockholders had great confidence in Jim, for under his management their
investment was beginning to pay, and they, he felt sure, approved of his
action in the C. & S.C. matter.

Everything was going well with the road, and the stock was climbing slowly
but steadily. It was not liable to any great fluctuation, for most of its
holders regarded it as a permanent investment and it did not change hands
to any great extent. Comparatively little of it got into the hands of
speculators.

But suddenly it began to jump. It was evident to every one who watched it
that some important deal was afoot. Jim Weeks was as much in the dark as
any one. He had watched its violent fluctuations for a week while he
vainly sought to ferret out the motive that was causing them. And on this
particular morning, though he sent his secretary, Harvey West, to talk to
Wing, he had little idea that the young fellow would get hold of a clew.

When the elevator stopped at the main floor, Harvey thrust the half-read
note back into his pocket. "No time for that sort of thing this morning,"
he thought. "I wonder how soon I'll be able to run down to see her." A
moment later he was walking rapidly toward the Dartmouth.

The men he saw and nodded to glanced round at him enviously. "Case of
luck," growled somebody. That was true. Harvey was lucky; lucky first and
foremost in that Ethel Harvey was his mother. He got his mental agility
as well as his indomitable cheeriness from her. He was a healthy, sane
young fellow who found it easy to work hard, who could loaf most
enjoyably when loafing was in order, and who had the knack of seeing the
humorous side of a trying situation. He had always had plenty of money,
but that was not the reason he got more fun out of his four years in
college than any other man in his class. He "got down to business" very
quickly after his graduation, and now at the end of another four years he
was private secretary to Jim Weeks. That of course wasn't luck. The fact
that Jim had fallen in love with Ethel Harvey thirty years before might
account for his friendly interest in her son, but it would not explain
Harvey's position of trust. He knew that he could not hold it a day
except by continuing to be the most available man for the place.

It is probable that on this morning, the contents of the pale blue note
contributed largely to his cheerfulness. It was evident that Miss Porter
liked him, and Harvey liked to be liked.

Wing's office on the sixth floor of the Dartmouth was a beautifully
furnished suite, presided over by a boy in cut-steel buttons. Wing himself
was a dapper little man, a capitalist by necessity only, for his money had
been left to him. His one ambition was to collect all the literature in
all languages on the game of chess; a game by the way which he himself did
not play. "Mr. Wing had gone out to lunch about an hour before," said the
boy in buttons. "Would Mr. West wait?" Harvey, who knew Mr. Wing's
luncheons of old, said no, but he would call again in the afternoon. As he
walked back to the elevator his eye fell upon another office door which
bore the freshly painted legend, "Frederick McNally, Attorney-at-law."

Harvey lunched at the Cafe Lyon, which is across the street from the main
entrance to the Dartmouth. The day was warm for late September, and he
selected a seat just inside the open door. From his table he could see
people hurrying in and out of the big office building. He watched the
crowd idly as he waited for his lunch, and finally his interest shifted to
the big doors, which seemed to have something human about them, as they
maliciously tried to catch the little messenger boys who rushed between
them as they swung.

Suddenly his attention came back to the crowd, centring on a party of four
men who turned into the great entrance. Three of them he knew, and the
fact that they were together suggested startling possibilities. They were
Wing, Thompson and William C. Porter of Chicago and Truesdale, First
Vice-President of the C. & S.C. and, this was the way Harvey thought of
him, father of the Miss Katherine Porter whose name was at the bottom of
the note in the blue envelope. Thompson, a fat, flaccid man with a
colorless beard, was laboriously holding the door open for Mr. Porter,
then he preceded little Mr. Wing. The fourth man was a stranger to Harvey.

He was starting to follow them when the waiter came up with his order.
That made him pause, and a moment's reflection convinced him that he had
better wait. He decided that if the meeting of Porter with the two M. & T.
directors were not accidental they would be likely to be in consultation
for some time, and he would gain more by inquiring for Mr. Wing at the
expiration of a half hour than by doing it now. So he lunched at leisure
and then went back to the sixth floor of the Dartmouth.

He was met by a rebuff from Buttons. "No, Mr. Wing had not come back yet,"
and again "Would Mr. West wait?" Harvey could think of nothing better to
do, so he sat down to think the matter out. He was puzzled, for the three
men were in the building, he felt sure. Then it came to him. "Jove," he
murmured, "McNally! McNally was that fourth man." He sat back in his chair
and tried to decide what to do.

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