The Young Engineers in Arizona | Page 3

here," laughed Duff easily. "Why, my son, the railroad was chartered on condition that it run through certain towns. Paloma, here, is one of the towns. So the road has to come here."
"But couldn't the road shift, just after it leaves here?" insisted Clarence.
"Oh, certainly. Yet, if the road shifted enough to avoid any possibility of resting on the big Man-killer, then it would have to go through the range beyond here--would have to tunnel under the hills for a distance of three miles. That would cost millions of dollars. No, sir; the railroad will have to lay tracks across the Man-killer, or else it will have to stand a loss so great as to cripple the road."
"Excuse me, sir," interrupted a keen, brisk, breezy-looking man, who had entered the shop only a moment or two before. "There's a way that the railroad can get over the Man-killer."
"What is that?" asked Duff, eyeing the newcomer's reflected image in the mirror.
"The first thing to do," replied the stranger, "is to drop these boy engineers out of the game. These youngsters came down here four days ago, looked over the scene, and promised that they could get the tracks laid-safely--for about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
"Pooh!" jeered Duff, with a sidelong glance at young Farnsworth.
"Of course it is pooh!" laughed the stranger. "The thing can it be done for any such amount as that, and it is a crazy idea, to take the opinions of boys, anyway, on any such subject as that. Now, there's a Chicago firm of contractors, the Colthwaite Construction Company, which has proposed to take over the whole contract for laying tracks across the Man-killer. These boys figure on using dirt and then more dirt, and still more, until they've satisfied the appetite of the Man-killer, filled up the quicksand and laid a bed of solid earth on which the tracks will run safely for the next hundred years. The Colthwaite people have looked over the whole proposition. They know that it can't be done. The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be wasted, and then the Colthwaite Company will have to come in, after all, drive its pillars of steel and concrete, lay well-founded beds and get a basis that will hold the new earth above it. Then the track will be safe, and the people of this part of Arizona will have a railroad of which they can be proud. But these boys--these kids in railroad building--humph!"
"Humph!" agreed Jim Duff dryly.
The gambler using the mirror before him, continued to study keenly this stranger, even after the latter had ceased talking and had gone to one of the chairs to wait his turn.
"You're through, sir," announced the barber who had been trying to improve the gambler's appearance. "Thank you, sir. Next."
Clarence, wholly crushed by the weight of opinion, was not yet through with his barber. Duff, after lighting a fresh cigar, stepped over to where the newcomer was seated.
"Are you stopping at the Mansion House?" inquired the gambler.
"Yes," answered the stranger, looking up.
"So am I," nodded the gambler. "So I shall probably have the pleasure of meeting you again."
"'Why, yes; I trust so," replied the stranger, after a quick, keen look at Duff. Undoubtedly this newcomer was accustomed to judging men quickly after seeing them.
"These boy engineers!" chucked Duff. "Humph!"
"Humph!" agreed the stranger.
At this moment two bronzed-looking, erect young men came tramping down the sidewalk together. Each looked the picture of health, of courage, of decision. Both wore the serviceable khaki now so common in surveying camps in warm climates. Below the knee the trousers were confined by leggings. Above the belt blue flannel shirts showed, yet these were of excellent fabric and looked trim indeed. To protect their heads and to shade their eyes as much as possible from the glare of Arizona desert sand, these young men wore sombreros of the type common in the Army.
"This looks like a good place, Harry,"' said the taller of the two young men. "Suppose we go inside."
They stepped into the barber shop together, nodding pleasantly to all inside. Then, hanging up their sombreros, they passed on to unoccupied chairs.
Just in the act of passing out, Jim Duff had stepped back to admit them.
"They're Reade and Hazelton, the very young engineers that the railroad has just put in charge of the Man-killer job," whispered one knowing citizen of Paloma. The news quickly spread about the barber shop.
Jim Duff already knew the boys by sight, since they were stopping at the Mansion House. He uttered an almost inaudible "humph!" then passed on outside.
Neither Tom Reade nor Harry Hazelton heard this exclamation, nor would they have paid any heed to it if they had.
Yes; the two young men were our friends of old, the young engineers. Our readers are