So for six days he kept about thirty miles of standard-gauge track between his car and Ed’s.  Ed would get word that he was at such a station and have his car dropped there, only to find that Ben had gone on.  Ed would follow on the next train, or mebbe hire a special engine; and Ben would hide off on some blind spur track.  They covered the whole division about three times without clashing, thanks to Ben’s superior information bureau; it being no trick at all to keep track of this wheeled apartment house of Ed’s.

Ed couldn’t understand it at first.  Here he’d come up to lick Ben, and Ben was acting queer about it.  Ed would send messages every day wanting to know when and where he could have a nice quiet chat with Ben that would not be interfered with by bystanders; and Ben would wire back that his time wasn’t his own and company business was keeping him on the jump, but as soon as this rush was over he would arrange an interview; and kind regards, and so on.  Or he might say he would be at some station all the following day; which would be a clumsy falsehood, because he was at that moment pulling out, as Ed would find when he got there.  The operating department must of thought them a couple of very busy men, wanting so much to meet, yet never seeming able to get together.

Ed got peeved at last by the way Ben was putting him off.  It wasn’t square and it wasn’t businesslike.  He had large mining interests in charge and here was Ben acting like he had all summer to devote just to this one little matter.  He called Ben’s attention to this by telegraph, but Ben continued to be somewhere else from where he said he was going to be.

After a week of this pussy-wants-a-corner stuff Ed got wise that the thing had come to be a mere vulgar chase, and that his private car was hampering him by being so easy to keep track of.  So he disguised himself by taking off his diamond ornaments and leaving his private car at Colfax, and started out to stalk Ben as a common private citizen in a day coach.  He got results that way, Ben supposing he was still with his car.  After a couple of scouting trips up and down the line he gets reliable word that Ben, with his bunch of high officials, is over at Wallace.

So much the better, thinks Ed. It will be fine to have this next disturbance right on the spot where a great wrong was done him fifteen years before.  So he starts for Wallace, wiring for his car to follow him there.  He’d found this car poor for the bloodhound stuff, but he wanted Ben to have a good look at it and eat his heart out with envy, either before or after what was going to happen to him.