"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

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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 cañon 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 cañon.




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