A blast of air, down-drawn from the heights to fill the dreadful vacuum, was still rocking the stopped car when Frisbie climbed nimbly to the railed rear platform and swung his lantern to light the faces of the three men braced in the doorway.

“A close call, gentlemen,” was his only comment; and then he appealed briefly to Ford for orders.

“Back us down slowly,” said Ford shortly, “and follow with your train.  We may need the men.”

Frisbie went forward through the wrecked private car, returning presently to flag Gallagher along with the lantern swung over the railing.  Down in the valley of the Pannikin the heavy, sickening fumes of the burned explosives hung in the air, and when the car swung in on the straight line the red glare of a wrecked and burning oil tank lighted the scene.

The camp site was blankly unrecognizable.  Where the ten-tracked yard had been there was a vast depression, half-filled with distorted steel and debris indescribable, twisted iron and splintered wood, with the water from the river pouring into it.  The commissary buildings and the surrounding bunk-shanties were gone, swept away as with the stroke of a mighty broom; and the trees on the hill-sides above were scorched and shriveled as if a forest fire had blasted them.

Frisbie was the first to speak after he had flagged Gallagher to a stand on the farthermost edge of the devastation.

“Any use to turn out the crew and hunt for them?” he asked.

Ford shook his head.

“No.  Leave M’Grath and a few others to stand guard and to flag the incoming steel trains, and let’s get out of this.  I’m sick; and so is Mr. Adair.”

XXVI

THE STAR OF EMPIRE

A week, the most strenuous week in Copah’s history, had passed, and still the president’s party delayed its return to what Miss Priscilla Van Bruce constantly referred to as “civilization”; though the Farthest West has always been slow to admit the derogatory comparison which the word implies.

During the strenuous week much had happened, and much more was scheduled to happen.  For one twenty-four-hour day the ex-speculator in Mr. Colbrith held out against the sharp attacks of the reawakened lust of conquest.  Then, from Jack’s Canyon on the Transcontinental, from men-clustered construction trains on the extension, over the passes from Summit Lakes, and across the brown plains from Green Butte, poured the army of gold-seekers, and the president was swept away and into the very vortex of the stock-jobbing whirlpool.

It was not until the third day of the week that Adair came ambling into Copah, riding a cart mule from Frisbie’s camp.  To his sister and his aunt the young man told everything; to his uncle nothing.  Between gasps in the speculative frenzy Mr. Colbrith found time to complain bitterly to his nephew of Ford’s defection.