“The scoundrels!” cried General Manager Ellsworth.
He was a man who believed in working along easy lines when possible.
His career as a railroad man had taught him the value of meeting other
people half way. Now the general manager's white face and flashing eyes
revealed the fighter in him.
From off to the south, beyond the quicksand, came a chorus of sharp,
shrill, gleeful whoops.
“There go the curs!” flared Harry.
Another volley of jeers reached the camp officials.
“They are mounted on horses,” spoke Tom judicially. “They couldn't
travel as fast on foot and yell at the same time.”
A third taunting chorus traveled over the desert. But Tom and his
friends, in the darkness of the night, could not make out the horsemen
nor judge how many there were of them.
“You'd better turn out the camp, Mr. Hawkins,” directed Tom in a calmer
voice.
The superintendent ran over to where a night engineer almost dozed at
his post beside a stationary engine.
Half a minute later a series of shrill blasts rang out over the camp.
Laborers came tumbling out of the tents. Many of them had slept so
soundly that even the noise of dynamiting they had regarded only as a
part of their dreams. But the whistle meant business.
“Get the torches out, Mr. Rivers,” called Tom, as one of the foremen
reported on a run.
To Foreman Payson, Harry gave the order to marshal a hundred of the men
to remain in and around the camp, alertly watchful.
“That's a good idea,” nodded Mr. Ellsworth. “The explosion may be only a
trick to, empty the camp, as a prelude to further mischief.”
Scores of torches flared in the darkness as the workmen hurried
westward. At the head of all went Tom Reade and the general manager.
Less than half a mile away they came upon the scene of mischief.
“It's just what I expected,” nodded Tom, as the leading party halted
under the flare of the torches. “You see, sir, here was the point
of greatest cave and drift in the quicksand. It's where your former
engineers found such a morass of the shifty stuff that they declared the
Man-killer never could have its appetite satisfied with dirt. There was
a good log and concrete foundation laid down there, and for thirty-six
hours the sand had not shifted a particle as far as the eye could
discover. Now, look at it!”
Before them the top layer of desert sand had sunk away, revealing a well
or sink, one hundred and fifty feet across and the bottom at least forty
feet below the general level.
“I always wondered why a suspension bridge wouldn't solve the problem
more easily and cheaply than any other construction,” muttered Mr.
Ellsworth, after he had gotten over his first indignation.
“To avoid every possibility of lurking quicksand the suspension bridge
would have to be more than a mile long,” Reade answered. “Beyond, there
are other treacherous little patches of quicksand. It would cost the
road millions to put up a suspension bridge that would hold.
“A short bridge would look all right and doubtless serve all right, for
a while. Then, some fine day, part of the structure would give, and a
trainload of passengers would be sucked down and out of sight by the
shifting sands of the Man-killer.”
Mr. Ellsworth turned aside with a shudder.
“I'm glad I'm not an engineer,” he said earnestly. “The responsibility
for safety of life at this point is all yours, Reade.”
“And I'm willing enough to take it, sir, if you don't run trains over
the Man-killer until the new roadbed has stood tests that I'll put upon
it.”
“It'll cost at least ten thousand dollars to repair the mischief that
the scoundrels have done to-night,” figured Harry Hazelton thoughtfully.
“Then, if we can find out the guilty wretches for certain, we'll see
that they earn more than that amount by enforced labor in prison,”'
retorted the general manager grimly.
“Mr. Bell!” called Tom briskly.
“Here, sir,” reported the foreman, coming forward..
“Mr. Bell, I wish you'd pick out twenty-one good men. Make the brightest
of the lot head of the new force of night watchmen. Place the other
twenty under his orders. Your gangs will come into play here later
than the others, so I'll let your shift of men have the first chance at
night-watchman duty.”
“All right, sir,” nodded Foreman Bell. “Any further orders?”
“None, except that your watchmen will do their best to guard both the
line of roadbed and the camp. Further, tell the night engineer to be
sure to have steam up so that he can blow a lot of signals at anytime in
the night.”
“Very good, sir,” and the foreman hurried away.
“I'm disgusted with myself for having been caught in this fashion,” Tom
admitted to Mr. Ellsworth. “But I hadn't an idea that Paloma held any
dynamite. I can't imagine how a frontier town on the alkali desert needs
dynamite.”
“It will probably be found that someone shipped it in a hurry,”
suggested Mr. Ellsworth.
“But how? Any fellow would be detected who had it brought in on our
trains. There has been no time to I stage I it from any other point
since the row with Duff started.”
“It's a puzzle,” admitted Mr. Ellsworth.
“It is, but it won't be for long,” Reade declared confidently. “There
are ways of finding out how that dynamite got into Paloma, there must be
ways of finding out who caused it to be brought in.”
Then, suddenly, Tom's eyes grew wider open and brighter.
“Mr. Ellsworth, I believe that dynamite was brought in before the
trouble opened.”
“But who would have wished to bring dynamite here until the trouble
started?”
“Anyone might be interested in doing it who wanted to see trouble
start.”
“I'm afraid I don't follow you, Reade,” observed the general manager,
frowning slightly.
“There were others who wanted the job of blocking the Man-killer,” Tom
went on earnestly. “They wanted a lot more money for the job than we
thought was necessary. I don't want to accuse anyone, but I am just a
trifle suspicious that the concern of Chicago contractors--”
“The Colthwaite people!” broke in Mr. Ellsworth.
“Yes; if they were bad people, and ugly business rivals--”
“How would the Colthwaite people be able to foresee that you were going
to have a fight with Jim Duff?” interposed Mr. Ellsworth.
“I'm going after the answer, if there is one. I hope to be able to tell
you the answer one of these days.”
Tom and Harry made two trips each, in different directions, to make sure
that the watch men were awake and alert. It was nearly eleven o'clock
when the general manager and his engineers turned in for a night's
rest--“subject to the approval of Jim Duff,” as Tom dryly stated it.
No more interruptions followed during the night, however. At daylight
the watchmen sought their tents and the day force began to stir soon
after.
After the steam whistle bad blown the breakfast call, Reade slipped away
from his friends to inspect the laborers at the meal.
“There are some of your men absent, Mr. Mendoza,” Tom murmured to the
Mexican foreman.
“Yes, Senor. Some of my men slipped away in the night.”
“Went off to Paloma, eh?”
Mendoza shrugged his shoulders.
“Gambling, drinking--both,” nodded Tom.
“Undoubtedly, Senor.”
“Get the names of your absent Mexicans, and report to me with them.”
Reade then went to the other foremen, with the same orders.
Before Tom had seated himself at his own meal, with Harry and Mr.
Ellsworth, the foremen appeared, lists in their hands. Tom rapidly ran
his finger down the lists.
“Twenty-eight Mexicans and fourteen Americans absent from camp,” he
muttered. “Foremen, when these men come back you may tell them that they
are no longer needed.”
All four of the gang bosses looked somewhat astonished.
“Merely for leaving camp in the night time?” Mendoza inquired.
“Yes, under the circumstances,” nodded Tom. “If any of these men declare
that they were properly absent, and did not visit the gambling and
the drinking dives, then such men may be reinstated after they have
satisfied Mr. Hazelton, Mr. Hawkins or myself of the truth of their
statements.”
“Some of these men will be very ugly when they find that they are
discharged, Senor,” suggested Mendoza.
“But you are loyal to us?”
“Can you doubt it, Senor?” asked Mendoza proudly.
“Then you will know how to handle your own fellow-countrymen. The
other foremen will be able to handle the rest of the disgruntled ones.
However, as I have told you, if any man claims that he is unjustly
treated, send him to headquarters for a chance at reinstatement.”
General Manager Ellsworth had heard the conversation, but had not
interfered. As soon as the young engineers were alone he joined them at
table, saying:
“Aren't you afraid, Reade, that these discharged men will hasten to join
our enemies?”
“That is very likely, sir,” Tom answered. “These missing men, however,
have shown their willingness to become our enemies by leaving camp and
seeking their pleasures in the strongholds of the scoundrels who are
fighting to break us up.”
“That's another way of looking at the matter,” assented the general
manager.
“I'd much rather have our enemies outside of camp than inside,” Reade
continued. “If we took these absentees back after they've been in the
company of rascals, then we wouldn't have any means of knowing how many
of the absentees had agreed to do treacherous things within the camp.
It would hardly be a wise plan to encourage the breeding of rattlesnakes
within the camp limits.”
It was nearly noon when the first batch of laborers, some American and
some Mexican, returned to camp. These men started to go by the checker's
hut at a distance, but keen-eyed Superintendent Hawkins saw them and
ordered them around to the hut.
“You'll have to wait here until your foremen are called,” declared the
checker.
“Say, what's the trouble here!” demanded one American belligerently.