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"Cayuse was once his chain-man." McCoppet was tremendously excited, though apparently as cold as ice, as he swiftly thought out the niceties of his own and fate's arrangements. "Cayuse's wife once worked for Mrs. Culver, cooking and washing." "Say, anybody'd swaller that," reflected the lumberman aloud. "But five thousand dollars ain't enough."
So far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of India as a chain-man. If he were very good, and passed the proper examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable employment. Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this talk.
Frederick Loring was about to set out on a surveying tour in behalf of the government. I secured a position in the party as chain-man. We set out for San Rafael, which is in Marin county, on the coast of the Pacific, just north of San Francisco. We had been out but five or six weeks, when Mr. Loring's health began seriously to fail him.
But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim when St Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel Creighton had sent for him. 'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up mathematics.
Loring, our chain-man and I prepared to make a triangulation, in order to get the distance from the point we were at, to a white stone on our line of survey, which was on the side of the opposite mountain and across the chaparral. Having finished the triangulation, Mr. Loring and I endeavored to cross the chaparral by a direction different from that which the main body of the party was pursuing.
Then one will say: "There are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be seen to look like a Sahib." What then? Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel's lead? 'I would tell what that other man had said.
Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim. Chain-man, rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky. Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners' comprehension.
Several times in the course of the long twenty-four hours' run south did the Colonel send for Kim, always developing this latter text. 'We be all on one lead-rope, then, said Kim at last, 'the Colonel, Mahbub Ali, and I when I become a chain-man. He will use me as Mahbub Ali employed me, I think. That is good, if it allows me to return to the Road again. This clothing grows no easier by wear.
'Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers, to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a chain-man, I may say to thee when we are working together: "Go across those hills and see what lies beyond."
'I think, said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that that that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him. 'That is what he must learn at Lucknow. 'Then order him to be jolly-dam'-quick.
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