"I have worked here on a small salary and done everything but maul spikes to keep down expenses on the division, because we had to make some showing to whoever wanted to buy our junk. In this way I took a roving commission and packed my bag from an office where I could acquire nothing I did not already know to a position where I could get hold of the problem of mountain transportation and cut the coal bills of the road in two."
"Have I cut the coal bills in two? No; but I have learned how. It will cost money to do that----"
"No. Don't let us be afraid to face figures. You will spend a hundred millions before you quit, Mr. Brock, and you will make another hundred millions in doing it. To put it bluntly, the mountains must be brought to terms. For three years I have eaten and lived and slept with them. I know every grade, curve, tunnel, and culvert from here to Bear Dance--yes, to the coast. The day of heavy gradients and curves for transcontinental tonnage is gone by. If I ever get a chance, I will rip this right of way open from end to end and make it possible to send freight through these ranges at a cost undreamed of in the estimates of to-day. But that was not my only object in coming to the mountains."
"Mr. Bucks and the men he has gathered around him--Callahan, Blood and the rest of us--are railroad men. Railroading is our business; we know nothing else. There was an embarrassing chance that when our buyer came he might be hostile to the present management. Happily," Glover bowed to the Pittsburg magnate, "he isn't; but he might have been----"
"I shouldn't speak of this if I did not know you were Mr. Bucks' closest friend. Even he doesn't know it, but six months of my own time--not the company's--I put in on a matter that concerned my friends and myself, and I have the notes for a new line to parallel this if it were needed--and Blood and I have the only pass within three hundred miles north or south to run it over. These were some of the reasons, Mr. Brock, why I came to the mountains."
"I understand. I understand perfectly. Mr. Glover, what is your age, sir?"
The time seemed ripe to put Gertrude's second hint into play.
"That is a subject I never discuss with anyone, Mr. Brock."