“Fetch him,” was the curt command; and Mr. Colbrith sat down to wade resignedly through the mass of delayed wire correspondence.

* * * * *

What remains of the story of the Pacific Southwestern is a chapter, as yet unfinished, in the commercial history of the great and growing empire of the West.

Of the rush to the Copah gold field; of the almost incredible celerity with which a stretch of one hundred and forty-odd miles of construction track was opened for the enormous traffic which was instantly poured in upon it; of the rapid extension of the line to a far western outlet; of the steady advance of P. S-W. shares to a goodly premium:  these are matters which are recorded in the newspaper files of the period.

For the typically American success of the Southwestern’s dramatic upward leap to the rank of a great railway system, President Colbrith has the name and the fame.  Yet here and there in the newspaper record there is mention of one Stuart Ford, “our rising young railroad magnate,” in the unashamed phrase of the Copah Megaphone, first as the president’s assistant; later, as first vice-president and general manager of the system, in the Chicago headquarters, with Mr. Richard Frisbie as his second in command on the western lines, and Mr. Charles Edward Adair as comptroller and chief of finances on the executive committee in New York.

Ford’s prophecies predicting the development of the new empire first traversed by the Western Extension have long since found ample fulfilment, as all the world knows.  Copah gave the region its first and largest advertisement; but other mining districts, with their imperative beckonings to a food-producing population, have followed in due course.

It was early in June of the year marking the opening of the completed Western Extension for through Pacific Coast traffic that a one-car train, drawn by the smartest of passenger engines in charge of a diminutive, red-headed Irishman, stormed bravely up the glistening steel on the eastern approach to Plug Pass.  The car was the rebuilt Nadia; and in obedience to a shrill blast of the cab air-whistle, Gallagher brought it to a stand on the summit of the mountain.

Alicia looked more than ever the artist’s ideal of the American womanly felicities when Ford lifted her from the step of the Nadia.

“You are quite sure Mr. Gallagher won’t mind?” she was saying, as they walked forward together.

“Mind?  Wait till you hear what he says.  Michael is an Irish diamond in the rough, and he knows when he is honored.”

They discovered the red-headed little man industriously “oiling around” for the swift glide down the western declivities.

“Michael,” said the first vice-president, “Mrs. Ford thinks she would like to take the Pannikin loop in the cab of the Six-eighty-eight.  Can you make room for us?”

Gallagher snatched his cap from his fiery head.