For the first few yards the assistant engineer ran almost as well as
though on a cinder track. Then his feet sank in. Soon he stumbled.
Then there came a time, within ten feet of Tom, when Harry felt his feet
settling in the sand despite his efforts to pull himself out.
In the meantime the haulers on the other line had forgotten to pull the
laborer nearer to safety.
“You men get your eyes on the job!” sternly commanded Payson, who seemed
capable of having eyes everywhere.
Harry got out, somehow. He made a bound, landing within arm's length of
Tom Reade.
“I'm here, old chum!” gasped Hazelton.
“I knew you'd be,” returned Tom calmly, “if there were any way of doing
it.”
Harry pulled himself together and floundered still closer.
Nor was there a moment to be lost. Tom was already reduced to the choice
between silence and having his mouth filled with sand.
Harry's hands worked with lightning speed. Feverishly he dug out the
sand, until he had scooped away enough to bare Tom's shoulders and a few
inches beneath.
Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down
to a snug noose under his armpits.
From the platform a cheer went up, for the unconscious laborer had just
been hauled to safety.
It was with a thrill of horror that Hazelton found his own legs firmly
embedded in the sand well up to his thighs.
“Get Reade started first!” shouted the young assistant engineer. “Don't
bother with me until I give the word.”
How the line fastened to Tom tightened and strained! At times it seemed
as though it must give way.
Presently Tom's shoulder and a part of his torso were free.
In the meantime Harry Hazelton had sunk in up to the waist line.
“We'll haul on you, too, now, Mr. Hazelton!” sounded the voice of
Foreman Payson.
“Don't you dare do it until I give the word,” thundered back the voice
of the assistant engineer.
With a line securely about him, Harry felt that he could afford to take
the slight chance of waiting his turn.
He saw Tom's knees coming up out of the sand before he called:
“Now, Payson, you can give me a little boost if you like. Don't pull me
in ahead of Tom Reade, however.”
Presently deafening cheers went up. Both young engineers were being
slowly, surely hauled to safe ground.
Then Tom and Harry reached a spot where they could rise to their own
feet and floundered. Tom started, then swayed dizzily.
“Steady, there, old Gridley boy!” mumbled Hazelton, slipping an arm
around his recovered chum.
Then the two young engineers reached the platform and a fresh tumult of
joyful cheering burst forth.
“Payson,” exclaimed Harry, going up to the foreman, and holding out his
hand, “will you accept my apologies for all I said to you? I had to use
strong language, or you'd have held me back from Reade.”
“I didn't believe he could be saved,” returned the foreman, with a
sickly smile, as he grasped Hazelton's outstretched hand.
Tom, too weak at first to stand, had dropped to his knees at the side of
the unconscious laborer, over whom some of the bystanders were working
in stupid fashion.
“This man must have medical attention at once!” Tom declared. “Some
of you men lift him to your shoulders. Be careful not to jolt him, but
travel at a jog all the way to the office building. Harry, can you sit
on your horse?”
“Surely,” said the young assistant.
“Lucky boy, then,” smiled Reade. “I won't be able to sit in saddle for
some minutes. Ride into camp and tell the operator to wire swiftly for a
physician to come out and attend to that man.”
“But you--”
“I'm here, am I not!” smiled Reade.
“I should say you are, Mr. Reade!” came a hoarse, friendly roar from one
of the laborers.
Hazelton did not delay. He was soon speeding back over the desert.
As for Tom, there were many offers of assistance, but he explained that
all he needed was to keep quiet and have a chance to get his breath
back.
Payson, in the meantime, had started the work going again, though most
of his men toiled with far less spirit than before the accident.
Ten minutes later Tom mounted his horse and rode slowly back toward
camp. By the time he reached there he made out the automobile of a
Paloma physician coming in haste.
Tom was still weak enough to tremble as Harry stepped outside and helped
him to the ground.
“Harry,” Reade remarked dryly, “I'm not going to bother to thank you for
such a simple little thing as saving my life out yonder. I am well aware
that you had the time of your life in doing it.”
“I might have had the time of my life,” returned Harry, with an
imitation of his chum's calmness, “if there had been more excitement
about it. It was all rather dull, wasn't it, old chap?”
Smiling, both stepped inside. Then Tom's face became grave when he saw
that the rescued laborer had not yet recovered consciousness.
“Somewhere in the world,” murmured Reade, as he dropped to one knee and
rested a finger-tip on the laborer's pulse, “there's someone--a woman,
or a child, or a white-haired old man--who wouldn't wish us to let this
man die. What have you men been doing for him?”
Before the answer could be given a honk sounded at the door. Then a
young doctor clad in white duck and carrying a three-fold medicine case,
stepped inside.
“Sucked down by the sand and hauled out again, Doc,” Tom explained.
The physician looked closely at his patient and Harry drove out the men
who had no especial business there.
“A little pin-head of glonoin on his tongue for a beginning,” decided
the physician, opening his case. From one of the vials he took a small
pellet, forcing it between the lips of the unconscious man. Then, with
his stethoscope, he listened for the heart beats.
“Another glonoin, and then we'll start in to wake up our friend,” said
the young doctor in white duck, after a pause.
Two or three minutes later the laborer opened his eyes.
“You've been trying not to hear the whistle,” laughed the doctor gently.
“A big fellow like you must be up and doing.”
Ten minutes later the doctor found Tom outside.
“The man will be all right now, with a little stuff that I'll leave for
him,” smiled the visitor. “Of course there's some man in camp who can
look after a comrade to-night?”
“Doc, couldn't you do a better job if you had the man in Paloma under
your own eyes tonight?” Tom questioned.
“Yes; undoubtedly.”
“Can you take him?”
“Yes.”
“Then do so. Give him all the attention he needs. Make out your bill
to the A. G. & N. M. Hand it to me, and I'll O.K. it and send it in to
headquarters for payment. If you think an automobile ride after dark
will do the poor chap good, give him one and put that in your bill,
too.”
“Reade, I want to shake hands with you,” said the physician earnestly.
“I've looked after railroad hands before, but this is the first time I
was ever asked to be humane to one. Have no fear but I'll send this man
back to you strong and grateful. What's his name?”
“I don't know,” returned Reade. “I don't even know to whose gang he
belongs, though I think he's one of Payson's men.”
Late the following afternoon the laborer was brought back to camp. The
following morning he returned to his work as usual.
During the next two weeks Tom and Harry directed all their energies, as
well as the labor of all of their men, to bridging over that bad spot in
the Man-killer that had so nearly claimed two lives. One after another
six different layers of log network were put down. The open box cars
brought up thousands of tons of good soil, which was dumped down into
the layers of interlaced logs.
“The old Man-killer must feel tremendously flattered at finding himself
so persistently manicured,” laughed Tom as he sat in saddle watching the
men putting down the sixth layer.
Steel piles, hollow and filled with cement, were being driven here, the
cement not going in until the top of the pile was but four feet above
the level of the desert.
“Look out yonder,” nodded Harry, handing his field glass to his chum.
“You can just make out a glint on the sand. That's one of our steel
piles being sucked under.”
“The explorer of a few centuries hence may find a lot of these piles,”
laughed Tom. “If he does, he'll most likely attribute them to the Pueblo
Indians or the Aztecs, and he'll write a learned volume about the high
state of civilization that existed among the savages here before the
white man came.”
“I'm mighty glad, Tom, that General Manager Ellsworth isn't out here
to see how many dozens of steel piles we're feeding hopelessly to the
Man-killer.”
“Not one of those piles is going down hopelessly,” Tom retorted. “Some
of the piles may disappear, and never be seen again, but each one
will help hold the drift at some point, near the surface, or perhaps a
thousand feet below the surface.”
“Only a thousand feet below the surface!” Harry grunted. “Tom, I often
feel certain that the Man-killer extends away down to the center of the
earth and up again on the other side. Before I'm a very old man I expect
to hear that several of our steel piles have shot up above the surface
in China or India.”
Hearing the noise of horse's hoofs behind him, Tom turned. He beheld
Fred Ransom riding out to the spot on a mottled “calico” horse.
“Look who's here,” Reade murmured to his chum.
“What are you going to do with him?” asked Hazelton, after a quick look.
“Run him off the line?”
“I don't know,” Tom answered slowly. “Ransom is trying hard to earn a
living, you know.”
Harry snorted. That sort of estimation of Ransom, even as a joke, was a
little too much for him.
“Mighty hot day, Reade,” called Ransom, as he reined in near the young
engineers.
“Yes,” said Tom slowly. “If I were enjoying myself beside a bottle of
cold soda on the Mansion House porch I don't believe I'd have the energy
to call for a horse and ride all the way out here in the heat.”
“Am I intruding?” demanded Ransom, with a swift, keen glance at the
young chief engineer.
“Oh, no, indeed!” came Tom's response. “You're as welcome as the flowers
in spring.”
“Thank you. It's a fine job you're doing out here.”
“Now it's my turn to extend my thanks to you,” Tom drawled. “Your praise
is all the more appreciated as coming from a competitor.”
“A competitor!” asked Ransom quickly, and with a half scowl. “I'm not an
engineer.”
“Your people are ranked as pretty fair engineers,” Reade rejoined.
“My people? What do you mean, Reade? There isn't an engineer in our
family.”
“No; but the Colthwaite Company employs a good many engineers,” Tom
suggested.
“Colthwaite?” repeated Ransom, now on his guard. “I have nothing to do
with that concern.”
“No?” asked Tom, as though greatly astonished. “Why, that's strange.”
“Why is it strange?”
“Why,” Tom Reade rejoined amiably, “everyone connected with the A. G.
& N. M. who knows anything at all about you credits you with being a
member of the Colthwaite Company's gloom department.”
“Gloom department?” gasped Ransom, with a wholly innocent-looking face.
“Oh, all right. I'll bite. What is a gloom department, anyway?”
“It's a comparatively recent piece of business apparatus,” smiled Tom.
“It is employed by big corporations as a club with which to hit smaller
crowds that want some of the business of life. The gloom department
might be called the bureau of knocking, or the hit-in-the-neck shift.”
“Is that what you accuse me of doing for the Colthwaite Company?” asked
Fred Ransom, his scowl deepening.
“Oh, the accusation isn't all mine,” Tom assured him unconcernedly.
“Some of it belongs elsewhere.”
“Your suspicions are utterly unwarranted,” retorted Ransom, choking
slightly.
“It's a lot of comfort to hear you say so,” Tom rejoined, as smilingly
as ever.
“You're on the wrong track this time, anyway,” Ransom asserted boldly.
“Still, I don't suppose you want me out here.”
“On the contrary, I greatly enjoy seeing you here,” Tom declared. “I'm
very grateful for the praise you offered me a moment ago.”
“You're welcome,” returned the Colthwaite agent, trying hard to smile.
“However, I won't take up your time. Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, then,” nodded Tom. “Drop in again, won't you? Any time
within working hours.”
“Confound that fellow Reade!” muttered Ransom angrily as he rode back to
Paloma. “He knows altogether too much--or suspects it. I shall have to
call Jim Duff's attention to him!”
“Why did you string the fellow so?” asked Harry when the chums were
alone once more.
“I didn't,” Reade retorted. “I came very close to giving him straight
information.”
“Now he'll be more on his guard.”
“That won't do him any good,” Tom yawned. “He has been on his guard
all along, yet we found him out. For that matter, any man who lives
regularly at the Mansion House these days is open to our suspicion.”
For the Mansion House, ever since Tom's having been ordered away, had
been a losing proposition. Now and then a traveling salesman stopped
there, though not many.
“By the way, Harry,” predicted Tom, as the chums were riding back to
Paloma at the close of the afternoon, “look out, in about three of four
days, for a new and permanent guest at the Cactus House.”
“Who's coming?” inquired Hazelton.
“Whatever man the Colthwaite Company decides to send to the Cactus House
as soon as headquarters in Chicago receives Ransom's report. I think
we'll know that new chap, too, when he shows up. Also, you'll find that
the new man is either an avowed enemy of Ransom, after a little, or else
he won't choose to know Ransom at all.”
“That's pretty wild guessing,” scoffed Harry Hazelton.
“Wait three or four days, and see whether it's guessing or one of the
fine fruits of logic,” proposed Reade. “Incidentally, the Colthwaite
people will wonder why it didn't occur to them before to send one of
their gloom men to live at the Cactus. Fact is, I've been looking for
the chap for more than a fort-night.”