Many disappointments had arisen since the birth of the Salmon River & Northwestern; many misfortunes had united to retard the development of its builder’s plans.  The first obstacle O’Neil encountered was that of climate.  During the summer, unceasing rains, mists, and fogs dispirited his workmen and actually cut their efficiency in half.  He had made certain allowances for this, of course, but no one could have foreseen so great a percentage of inefficiency as later developed.  In winter, the cold was intense and the snows were of prodigious depth, while outside the shelter of the Omar hills the winds howled and rioted over the frozen delta, chilling men and animals and paralyzing human effort.  Under these conditions it was hard to get workmen, and thrice harder to keep them; so that progress was much slower than had been anticipated.

Then, too, the physical difficulties of the country were almost insurmountable.  The morass which comprised the Salmon River plain was in summer a bottomless ooze, over which nothing could be transported, yet in winter it became sheathed with a steel-hard armor against which piling splintered.  It could be penetrated at that season only by the assistance of steam thawers, which involved delay and heavy expense.  These were but samples of the obstacles that had to be met, and every one realized that the work thus far had been merely preparatory.  The great obstruction, upon the conquest of which the success of the whole undertaking hinged, still lay before them.

But of all handicaps the most serious by far was the lack of capital.  Murray had foreseen as inevitable the abandonment by the Trust of its Cortez route, but its change of base to Kyak had come as a startling surprise and as an almost crushing blow.  Personally, he believed its present plan to be even more impracticable than its former one, but its refusal to buy him out had disheartened his financial associates and tightened their purse-strings into a knot which no argument of his could loose.  He had long since exhausted his own liquid capital, he had realized upon his every available asset, and his personal credit was tottering.  He was obliged to finance his operations upon new money—­a task which became ever more difficult as the months passed and the Trust continued its work at Kyak.  Yet he knew that the briefest flagging, even a temporary abandonment of work, meant swift and utter ruin.  His track must go forward, his labor must be paid, his supplies must not be interrupted.  He set his jaws and fought on stubbornly, certain of his ultimate triumph if only he could hold out.

A hundred miles to the westward was a melancholy example of failure in railroad-building, in the form of two rows of rust upon a weed-grown embankment.  It was all that remained of another enterprise which had succumbed to financial starvation, and the wasted millions it represented was depressing to consider.

Thus far O’Neil’s rivalry with the Trust had been friendly, if spirited, but his action in coming to the assistance of Mrs. Gerard and her daughter raised up a new and vigorous enemy whose methods were not as scrupulous as those of the Heidlemanns.