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There was an excellent chance for a hold-up at the junction. It was coming on to dusk as the through train made the stop, and there was no town, not even a station; nothing but a water tank and the littered jumble of a construction yard. My engine was making up a train of material cars to be taken to our end-of-track camp, and I had to wait for it to come within hailing distance.
It was a rather sorry mount at that, and when he was dragging it out into the street, Jack Benson, the youngest member of his staff, rode up, that moment in from the tie-camp above Cow Mountain. "Don't dismount, Jack," he ordered curtly. "You're just in time to save me eight or ten miles, when the inches are worth dollars. Ride for the end-of-track and Frisbie on a dead run.
These in the immediate foreground; and a little way apart, perched high enough on the steep slope of the mountain side to be out of the camp turmoil, a small structure, half plank and half canvas to wit, the end-of-track telegraph office. It was Virginia who first marked the boxed-up tent standing on the slope. "What do you suppose that little house-tent is for?" she asked.
But if I should venture a guess, I should say it was some one who didn't want me to answer the first call for breakfast at your end-of-track camp this morning. What do we do?" Gallagher was thinking. "We passed a camp av surfacers tin mile back, and there'd be rails at Arroyo Siding, tin mile back o' thot," he said reflectively.
You've got to get me to the end-of-track before it comes to blows between Mr. Colbrith and Stuart Ford. I know both men, Mr. Leckhard. If the iron comes to a certain heat, the past master of all the peacemakers won't be able to patch things together." "Ford will resign," said the engineer. "That is what I'm afraid of; and we can't let him resign. That would mean Mr.
Gallagher nerved himself to fight it through alone. Mile after mile of the time-killing track swung slowly to the rear, and there was not even the flick of speed to help in the grim battle. Dawn came when the end-of-track camp was still forty miles away, but the breaking day brought no surcease of strugglings.
We have only the one wire, and it's on temporary poles most of the way. It broke down on us this morning, and I can't raise the end-of-track." "Block number two," said Adair cheerfully. "We seem to be out of luck this evening." Then, with searching abruptness: "Do you call yourself Ford's friend, Mr. Leckhard?" "Rather," said the Saint's Rest Pooh Bah. "He hired me; and when he goes, I go."
One evening, just after I had closed the commissary, one of the water-boys came to tell me that I was wanted in the contractors' office, a little shack at the far side of the end-of-track cantonments. Hadley, the senior member of the firm, was alone when I showed myself at the door. "Come in, Bertrand," he invited, gruffly genial; "come in and wait a minute until I go over this estimate again.
Do you attach any particular importance to the president's trip over the extension?" Leckhard shook his head. "I'm only a passenger I see what goes by the car-windows. Mr. Colbrith was dead set on pushing over to the end-of-track wouldn't even wait for daylight. You probably know him better than I do " "He is my uncle," Adair cut in. "Oh; then I can't tell you anything about him.
"And the president?" queried the visitor. "Mr. Colbrith's car is at the end-of-track. You wished to join the party in the Nadia?" "That is what I had in mind," said Adair, not too anxiously. Mr. North shook his head. "I don't think you'd enjoy the run over the construction track. Mr.
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