"No; and there isn"t one," Tom a.s.sured him. "Why will you be so foolish---so nervous? In other words, why do you destroy your five senses with cigarettes in this fashion?"
Cl-cl-click!
Alf Drew halted, trembling so that he could hardly stand.
"I"m going to quit camp---going to get out of this place," he shivered. "The ground is full of rattlers. O-o-o-oh! There"s another tuning up."
Tom laughed covertly. The disturbing sound came again.
"I never saw a place like this part of the range," Alf all but sobbed, his breath catching. "Oh, won"t I be glad to see a city again!"
"Just so you can find a store where you can buy cigarettes?" Tom Reade queried.
"I wish I had one, now," moaned the young victim. "It would steady me."
"The last ones that you smoked didn"t appear to steady you," the young engineer retorted. "Just see how unstrung you are. Every step you take you imagine you hear rattlers sounding their warning."
"Do you tell me, on your sacred honor," proposed Alf, "that you haven"t heard a single rattler this afternoon?"
"I give you my most solemn word that I haven"t," Tom answered.
"Come, come, Alf! What you want to do is to shake off the trembles.
Let me take your arm. Now, walk briskly with me. Inflate your chest with all the air you can get in as we go along. Just wait and see if that isn"t the way to shake off these horrid cigarette dreams."
Something in Reade"s vigorous way of speaking made Alf Drew obey.
Tom put him over the ground at as good a gait as he judged the cigarette victim would be able to keep up.
Readers of the preceding volumes of this series, and of other, earlier series, need not the slightest introduction to Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton. Our readers of the "_Grammar School Series_"
know Tom and Harry as two of the members of that famous s.e.xtette of schoolboy athletes who, under the leadership of d.i.c.k Prescott, were known as d.i.c.k & Co.
In the "_High School Boys Series_," too, our readers have followed the fortunes of Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, through all their triumphs on football fields, on baseball diamonds and in all the school sports.
d.i.c.k Prescott and Greg Holmes succeeded in winning appointments to the United States military Academy, and their adventures are fully set forth in the "_West Point Series_."
Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell "made" the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and what befell them there has been fully set forth in the "_Annapolis Series_."
Reade and Harry Hazelton elected to go through life as civil engineers.
In "_The Young Engineers in Colorado_" has been fully set forth the extraordinary work of these young men at railroad building through the mountains wilds. In "_The Young Engineers in Arizona_"
we have followed Tom and Harry through even more startling adventures, and have seen how they handled even greater problems in engineering.
Up to date the careers of these two bright young men had not been humdrum ones. The surroundings in which their professional lives had been pa.s.sed had been such as to supply them with far more startling adventures than either young man had ever looked for.
And now they were in Nevada, the state famous for its gold and silver mines. Yet they had come ere solely in search of a few weeks of rest.
Rest? There was anything but rest immediately ahead of the young engineers, but the curtain had not been lifted.
Immediately after the completion of their great work in Arizona, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had gone back east to the good old home town of Gridley. While there they had encountered d.i.c.k Prescott and Greg Holmes, their old school chums, at that time cadets at the United States Military Academy. The doings of the four old chums at that time in Gridley are set forth fully in "_d.i.c.k Prescott"s Third Year At West Point_."
During the weeks spent East, Tom and Harry had taken almost their first steps in the study of metallurgy. They had succeed in mastering the comparatively simple art of a.s.saying gold and silver.
So now, with the summer past, we find our young engineers out in Nevada, taking a little more rest just because no new engineering task of sufficient importance had presented itself.
"If we"re going to be engineers out West, though, Harry, we simply must know a good deal about a.s.saying precious metals," Tom had declared.
So, though the chums were "taking a rest," as they phrased it, they had brought with them a small furnace and the rest of the outfit for a.s.saying minerals in small quant.i.ties.
Today, however, was altogether too fine for thoughts of work. Just after breakfast Harry Hazelton had borrowed the only horse in camp, belonging to Jim Ferrers, their cook and guide, and had ridden away for the day.
Barely had Hazelton departed when Alf Drew, hungry, lonely and wistful, had happened along. He asked for "a job." There really wasn"t one for him, but good-natured Reade created one, offering five dollars a month and board.
"No telling, young man, how long the job will last," Tom warned him.
"We may at any hour break camp and get away."
But Alf had taken the job and gratefully. Not until after the noon meal had the little fellow revealed his unfortunate vice for cigarette smoking.
"You"ve simply got to give up that habit, Alf" Tom urged, as they walked along.
"You can"t make me," retorted young Drew. "You"ve no right to."
"No, I haven"t," Tom admitted soberly. "If I had any real rights over you I"m afraid I"d turn you over my knee and spank you, three times a day, until you gave up the beastly habit."
"You"re not going to bounce me, are you?" asked Alf.
"No; I"ll keep you here as long as we can use a boy. But, mark me, Alf, somehow, and before very long, I"m going to break you from your cigarettes. I don"t know how I"m going to do it, but I"m going to do it just the same!"
Alf Drew looked uncommonly solemn, but he said nothing.
For five minutes more they walked on, then came suddenly out from under a line of trees and stood at the edge of a low cliff, gazing down in astonishment at the gully below them.
"What on earth-----" began Tom Reade, in amazement.
"Let"s scoot!" begged Alf tremulously. "There"s going to be some killing right down there!"
It certainly looked that way.
In the gully three automobiles, showing the effects of long travel over hard roads, stood close together. More than a dozen people, all but two of whom were dressed in "eastern" clothes, stood by the machines. Two of the party were women, and one a girl of twelve.
The two men who belonged to the party, but did not appear to be "eastern," had drawn revolvers, and now stood facing four sullen-looking men who stood with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles resting on the ground.
"Gracious! We can"t have any shooting with women and children standing around to get hit!" gasped Tom Reade.
CHAPTER II
TROUBLE BREWS ON THE TRAIL
So silent had been the approach of Tom and his waif companion that those below had not perceived them.