Soldiers of Fortune | Page 6

of the story, and the men next to them
appeared equally unconscious. But the cowboy, Miss Langham noted
out of the corner of her eye, after a look of polite surprise, beamed with
amusement and continued to stare up and down the table as though he
had discovered a new trait in a peculiar and interesting animal. For
some reason, she could not tell why, she felt annoyed with herself and
with her friends, and resented the attitude which the new-comer
assumed toward them.
``Mrs. Porter tells me that you know her son George?'' she said. He did
not answer her at once, but bowed his head in assent, with a look of
interrogation, as though, so it seemed to her, he had expected her, when
she did speak, to say something less conventional.
``Yes,'' he replied, after a pause, ``he joined us at Ayutla. It was the
terminus of the Jalisco and Mexican Railroad then. He came out over
the road and went in from there with an outfit after mountain lions. I
believe he had very good sport.''
``That is a very wonderful road, I am told,'' said King, bending forward
and introducing himself into the conversation with a nod of the head
toward Clay; ``quite a remarkable feat of engineering.''
``It will open up the country, I believe,'' assented the other,
indifferently.
``I know something of it,'' continued King, ``because I met the men
who were putting it through at Pariqua, when we touched there in the
yacht. They shipped most of their plant to that port, and we saw a good
deal of them. They were a very jolly lot, and they gave me a most

interesting account of their work and its difficulties.''
Clay was looking at the other closely, as though he was trying to find
something back of what he was saying, but as his glance seemed only
to embarrass King he smiled freely again in assent, and gave him his
full attention.
``There are no men to-day, Miss Langham,'' King exclaimed, suddenly,
turning toward her, ``to my mind, who lead as picturesque lives as do
civil engineers. And there are no men whose work is as little
appreciated.''
``Really?'' said Miss Langham, encouragingly.
``Now those men I met,'' continued King, settling himself with his side
to the table, ``were all young fellows of thirty or thereabouts, but they
were leading the lives of pioneers and martyrs--at least that's what I'd
call it. They were marching through an almost unknown part of Mexico,
fighting Nature at every step and carrying civilization with them. They
were doing better work than soldiers, because soldiers destroy things,
and these chaps were creating, and making the way straight. They had
no banners either, nor brass bands. They fought mountains and rivers,
and they were attacked on every side by fever and the lack of food and
severe exposure. They had to sit down around a camp-fire at night and
calculate whether they were to tunnel a mountain, or turn the bed of a
river or bridge it. And they knew all the time that whatever they
decided to do out there in the wilderness meant thousands of dollars to
the stockholders somewhere up in God's country, who would some day
hold them to account for them. They dragged their chains through miles
and miles of jungle, and over flat alkali beds and cactus, and they
reared bridges across roaring canons. We know nothing about them and
we care less. When their work is done we ride over the road in an
observation-car and look down thousands and thousands of feet into the
depths they have bridged, and we never give them a thought. They are
the bravest soldiers of the present day, and they are the least recognized.
I have forgotten their names, and you never heard them. But it seems to
me the civil engineer, for all that, is the chief civilizer of our century.''

Miss Langham was looking ahead of her with her eyes half-closed, as
though she were going over in her mind the situation King had
described.
``I never thought of that,'' she said. ``It sounds very fine. As you say,
the reward is so inglorious. But that is what makes it fine.''
The cowboy was looking down at the table and pulling at a flower in
the centre-piece. He had ceased to smile. Miss Langham turned on him
somewhat sharply, resenting his silence, and said, with a slight
challenge in her voice:--
``Do you agree, Mr. Clay,'' she asked, ``or do you prefer the
chocolate-cream soldiers, in red coats and gold lace?''
``Oh, I don't know,'' the young man answered, with some slight
hesitation. ``It's a trade for each of them. The engineer's work is all the
more absorbing, I imagine, when the difficulties