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Updated: August 7, 2024
The din of the day's quarrying was over the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers.
In another hour the entire camping outfit would be loaded on the waiting flat-cars and taken to the end of the track which again stretched over two miles westward and a new camping-ground found, after which breakfast would be served and the phenomenal track-laying be again continued.
At a bend in the creek some two hundred yards from the track-machine and its string of flat-cars, Alex sharply paused. Two saddled ponies were hobbled together in the creek-bottom. Casting a glance toward the construction-train, Alex leaped into the gully, out of sight.
From where he stood he could see straight down the railroad tracks to the cut, down the wall of which, some hours before, Trevison had ridden the black horse. The dinky engine, with its train of flat-cars, was steaming toward him. As he watched, engine and cars struck the switch and ran onto the siding, where they came to a stop. Corrigan frowned and looked at his watch.
The overtaking of such a train was a thing of magnificent nothing for the long-strided engine, and as the flying express passed its weaker brother, one heard one or two feeble and immature puffs from the other engine, saw the fireman wave his hand to his luckier fellow, saw a string of foolish, clanking flat-cars, their freights covered with tarpaulins, and then the train was lost to the rear.
That was a night of horrors. Sloshing through the mud, over unknown roads and streets, soaked to the skin. Oh! well, it was a very good initiation for what was to follow, all right, all right. Polite language is not adequate to describe the loading of our train: getting all the wagons on the dinky little flat-cars and the horses aboard.
At the word, "Ready!" a hauling chain, passing through an anchored pulley-block far up the grade and back to the freed engine of the construction train, was made fast to the forward end of the bolted section; a second word of command, and the engine backed swiftly, dragging the prepared section off over the rollers of the flat-cars and into place on the ties.
The lonely hours were winged, as if in a hurry to resolve back into the elements the flimsy remains of that great camp. And that spot was haunted. Casey left Benton on the work-train. It was composed of a long string of box and flat-cars loaded with stone, iron, gravel, ties all necessaries for the up-keep of the road.
In another hour he received by wire instructions from Lincoln to go ahead. In twenty-eight days he had the thirty mortar-beds in readiness; and Tom Scott, who had at the time, very fortunately for the country, taken charge of the military transportation, had provided thirty flat-cars for the transit of the mortar-beds to Cairo.
"I have an option of a rattling good second-hand locomotive down at the Santa Fe shops, and the Hawkins & Barnes Construction Company have offered me a steam shovel, half a dozen flat-cars, and a lot of fresnos and scrapers at ruinous prices. This equipment is pretty well worn, and they want to get rid of it before buying new stuff for their contract to build the Arizona and Sonora Central.
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