"That point has been covered. Bucks had a long talk with Agnew over the wire last night. He is needed all the time at the Blackwood bridge and he is relieved here when you arrive. Now what"s the matter with you?"
"Nothing whatever if that is the situation. I"d much rather keep out of it, but there isn"t work enough here for two engineers.
"What do you mean?"
"This isn"t very bad."
"Not very bad! Well, how much time do you want to put a track in here?"
Glover"s eyes were roaming up and down the canon. "How much can you give me?" he asked.
"Till to-night."
Glover looked at his watch. "Then get two hundred and fifty men in here inside of an hour."
"We"ve picked up about seventy-five section men so far, but there aren"t two hundred and fifty men within a hundred miles."
Glover pointed north. "Ed Smith"s got two hundred men not over three miles from here on the irrigation ditch."
"That only shows I"ve no business in this game," remarked Callahan, looking at Morris Blood. "This is where you take hold."
Blood nodded. "Leave that to me. Let"s have the orders all at once, Ab. Say where you want headquarters."
The engineer stretched a finger toward the point of rocks across the canon. "Right above the Cat"s Paw."
"Tell Bill Dancing to cut in the wrecking instrument and put an operator over there for Glover"s orders," directed Blood, turning to Smith Young.
"I"m off for something to eat," said Callahan, "and by the way, what shall I tell Bucks about the chances?"
"Can you get Ed Smith"s outfit?" asked Glover, speaking to Blood.
"Well, I know you can--Ed"s a Denver man." He meditated another moment; "We need his whole outfit, mind you."
"I"ll get it or resign. If I succeed, when can you get a train through?"
"By midnight." Callahan staggered. Glover raised his finger. "If you back off the ledge they will need a new general superintendent."
"By midnight?"
"I think so."
"You can"t get your rock in by that time?"
"I reckon."
"Agnew says it will take a hundred cars."
"That"s not far out of the way. On flat cars you won"t average much over ten yards to the car, will you, Morris?"
Like two wary gamblers Callahan and the chief of construction on the mountain lines coldly eyed each other, Glover standing pat and the general superintendent disinclined through many experiences to call.
"I"m not doing the talking now," said Callahan at length with a sidewise glance, "but if you get a hundred cars of rock into that hole by twelve o"clock to-night--not to speak of laying steel--you can have my job, old man."
"Then look up another right away, for I"ll have the rock in the river long before that. Now don"t rubber, but get after the men and the drills----"
"The drills?"
"I said the whole outfit."
"Would it be proper to ask what you are going to drill?"
"Perfectly proper." Glover pointed again to the shelving wall across the river. "It will save time and freight to tumble the Cat"s Paw into the river--there"s ten times the rock we need right there--I can dump a thousand yards where we need it in thirty seconds after I get my powder in. That will give us our foundation and your roadmasters can lay a track over it in six hours that will carry your fruit--I wouldn"t recommend it for dining-cars, but it will do for plums and cherries.
And by the way, Morris," called Glover--Blood already twenty feet away was scrambling down the path--"if Ed Smith"s got any giant powder borrow sticks enough to spring thirty or forty holes with, will you?
I"ve got plenty of black up at Pilot. You can order it down by the time we are ready to blast."
In another hour the canon looked as if a hive of bees were swarming on the Cat"s Paw. With shovels, picks, bars, hammers, and drills, hearty in miners" boots and pied in woollen shirts the first of Ed Smith"s men were clambering into place. The field telegraph had been set up on the bench above the point: every few moments a new batch of irrigation men appeared stringing up the ledge, and with the roadmasters as lieutenants, Glover, on the apex of the low spur of the mountain, taking reports and giving orders, surveyed his improvised army.
At the upper and lower ends of the track where the roadbed had not completely disappeared the full force of section men, backed by the irrigation laborers, were busy patching the holes.
At the point where the break was complete and the Rat River was viciously licking the vertical face of the rock a crew of men, six feet above the track level, were drilling into the first ledge a set of six-foot holes. On the next receding ledge, twelve feet above the old track level, a second crew were tamping a set of holes to be sunk twelve feet. Above them the drills were cutting into the third ledge, and still higher and farther back, at twenty feet, the largest of all the crews was sinking the eighteen-foot holes to complete the fracture of the great wall. Above the murmuring of the steel rang continually the calls of the foremen, and hour after hour the shock of the drills churned up and down the narrow canon.
During each hour Glover was over every foot of the work, and inspecting the track building. If a track boss couldn"t understand what he wanted the engineer could take a pick or a bar and give the man an object lesson. He patrolled the canon walls, the roadmasters behind him, with so good an eye for loose bowlders, and fragments such as could be moved readily with a gad, that his a.s.sistants before a second round had spotted every handy chunk of rock within fifty feet of the water. He put his spirit into the men and they gave their work the enthusiasm of soldiers. But closest of all Glover watched the preparations for the blast on the Cat"s Paw.
Morris Blood in the meantime was sweeping the division for stone, ballast, granite, gravel, anything that would serve to dump on Glover"s rock after the blast, and the two men were conferring on the track about the supplies when a messenger appeared with word for Glover that Mr. Brock"s party were coming down the canon.
When Glover intercepted the visitors they had already been guided to the granite bench where his headquarters were fixed. With Mr. Brock had come the young men, Miss Donner, and Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney signalized her arrival by sitting down on a chest of dynamite--having intimidated the modest headquarters custodian by asking for a chair so imperiously that he was glad to walk away at her suggestion that he hunt one up--though there was not a chair within several miles. It had been no part of Glover"s plan to receive his guests at that point, and his first efforts after the greetings were to coax them away from the interest they expressed in the equipment of an emergency headquarters, and get them back to where the track crossed the river. But when the young people learned that the blue-eyed boy at the little table on the rock could send a telegram or a cablegram for them to any part of the world, each insisted on putting a message through for the fun of the thing, and even Mrs. Whitney could hardly be coaxed from the illimitable possibilities just under her.
With a feeling of relief he got them away from the giant powder which Ed Smith"s men were still bringing in, and across the river to the ledge that commanded the whole scene, and was safely removed from its activities.
Glover took ten minutes to point out to the president of the system the difficulties that would always confront the operating department in the canon. He charted clearly for Mr. Brock the whole situation, with the hope that when certain very heavy estimates went before the directors one man at least would understand the necessity for them. Mr. Brock was a good questioner, and his interest turned constantly from the general observations offered by Glover to the work immediately in hand, which the engineer had no mind to exploit. The young people, however, were determined to see the blast, and it was only by strongly advising an early dinner and promising that they should have due notice of the blast that Glover got rid of his visitors at all.
He returned with them to the caboose in which they had come down, and when he got back to the work the big camp kettles were already slung along the bench, and the engine bringing the car of black powder was steaming slowing into the upper canon. On a flat bowlder back of the cooks, Morris Blood, Ed Smith, and the roadmasters were sitting down to coffee and sandwiches, and Glover joined them. Men in relays were eating at the camp and dynamiters were picking their way across the face of the Cat"s Paw with the giant powder. The engineers were still at their coffee-fire when the scream of a locomotive whistle came through the canon from below. Blood looked up. "There"s one of the fast mail engines, probably the 1026. Who in the world has brought her up?"
"More than likely," suggested Glover, finishing his coffee, "it"s Bucks."
CHAPTER VIII
SPLITTING THE PAW
Preceded by a track boss along the ledges where the blasting crew was already putting down the dynamite, a man almost as large as Glover and rigged in a storm cap and ulster made his way toward the camp headquarters. The mountain men sprang to their feet with a greeting for the general manager--it was Bucks.
He took Blood"s welcome with a laugh, nodded to the roadmasters, and pulling his cap from his head, turned to grasp Glover"s hand.
"I hear you"re going to spoil some of our scenery, Ab. I thought I"d run up and see how much government land you were going to move without a permit. Glad you got down so promptly. Callahan had nervous prostration for a while last night. I told him you"d have some sort of a trick in your bag, but I didn"t suppose you would spring the side of a mountain on us. Am I to have any coffee or not? What are you eating, dynamite? Why, there"s Ed Smith--what are you hanging back in the dark for, Ed? Come out here and show yourself. It was like you to lend us your men. If the boys forget it, I sha"n"t."
"I"d rather see you than a hundred men," declared Glover.