“What is that Bible-saying about the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land?” said Kenneth, as they were passing one of the wilderness bar-rooms buttressing a huge boulder by the trail side.  “I should think you’d rule those fellows emphatically and peremptorily out of the game, Ford.  They must make a lot of trouble for you, first and last.”

“They do,” was the sober response.  “But how would you go about it to rule them out?”

The lawyer laughed.  “My writs don’t run this far.  But I thought yours did.  Why don’t you fire ’em bodily; tell ’em their number is 23—­skiddoo!  Aren’t you the Sublime Porte—­the court of last resort—­the big boss—­over here?”

Ford pulled his horse down to a walk.

“Kenneth, let me tell you:  behind those barkeepers are the contractors; behind the contractors is Mr. North; behind Mr. North, the president.  My little lever isn’t long enough to turn the world over.”

“Pshaw!” said Kenneth.  “Mr. Colbrith wouldn’t stand for anything like that!  Why, he’s a perfect fanatic on the whisky question.”

“That’s all right,” said Ford acidly.  “It doesn’t go as far as Mr. Colbrith in the matter of the debauching particulars.  It stops in Denver; and Mr. Colbrith approves Denver in the lump—­signs the vouchers without looking at them, as Evans would say.  I tell you what I believe—­what I am compelled to believe.  These individual saloon-keepers are supposed to be in here on their own hook, on sufferance.  They are not; they are merely the employees of a close corporation.  Among the profit sharers you’ll find the MacMorroghs at the top, and Mr. North’s little ring of Denver officials close seconds.”

“Do you honestly believe that, Ford?”

“I do.  I can’t prove it, of course.  If I could, I’d go to New York and fight it out.  And the whisky isn’t all of it, or even the worst:  there are women in some of these camps, and there would be more if Leckhard didn’t stand guard at Saint’s Rest and turn them back.”

“Heavens—­what a cesspool!” said the attorney.  “Does a laboring man ever get out of here with any of his earnings?”

“Not if the MacMorroghs can help it.  And you can figure for yourself what the moral atmosphere must be.  We are less than two months old on the work, but already the Western Extension is a streak of crime; crime unpunished, and at times tacitly encouraged.  You may say that my department isn’t responsible—­that this is the contractors’ day and game.  If that is true now—­which it isn’t—­it will no longer be true when we come in with our own employees, the track-layers.”

But now Kenneth was shaking his head.

“I can’t believe it, Ford.  You’re blue because Mr. Colbrith has thrown Mr. North into your boat as ballast.  I don’t blame you:  but you mustn’t let it make you color-blind.”

Ford said nothing.  The day was yet young, and the long journey was still younger.  It was at the noon halt, made at a subcontractor’s camp near a great earth-cutting and a huge fill, that Kenneth had his object lesson.