A BREACH OF DISCIPLINE
“What do you reckon these O. C. people will do, Larry, when they find
that we’ve got ahead of them in the canyon?”
“Huh?” came a yawning grunt from the opposite tent cot. Then: “Good
goodness! can’t you let a fellow sleep for a few minutes?”
“A few minutes? It’s ten o’clock, and I’ll bet we’re the only two
people left in this camp――unless the other one is the mess cookee!”
“Ah-yow!” gaped the sleeper, turning upon his back and stretching
his arms over his head. “I feel as if I’d been up three nights
hand-running, and then some. Ten o’clock, did you say?”
“Yep, and five minutes after. I guess Mr. Ackerman gave orders to let
us sleep――to pay for the hiking we did yesterday and last night. But
you haven’t told me yet what you think the O. C. bunch will do, now
that we’ve pushed our grading force up and got ahead of them at the
place where they were fixing to cross the river.”
Before Larry could answer the tent flap was pulled open and a
well-built young fellow about two years their senior stuck his face in
and grinned good-naturedly at them.
“Now then, lazyheads!” was his greetings; “’bout ready to turn out and
wash your face and hands?”
“We’re thinking about it,” said Dick. “But just why, in particular――if
you don’t mind telling us?”
“Oh, nothing; only the chief said I might persuade you to help me.
We’re running the wires up to connect with the new ‘front,’ and I’m
needing a couple of bell-hops.”
“Bell-hops nothing!” Dick scoffed. “You’re ’way off. We’re the
pulchritudinous――that’s a good word; stick it down in your
note-book――we are the pul-chri-tu-di-nous little do-whichits of this
outfit. Haven’t you heard what we did last night?”
“Heard it?” laughed the young wire boss, whose name was the most
unusual one of Smith. “Great Cæsar! I haven’t been hearing anything
else! Time your story got passed around a few times, you’d think there
was nothing to it in this camp with you two left out. That’s what makes
me want to do something for the good of your souls――help reduce the
chestiness a bit. Turn out and snatch a bite of breakfast. We’re about
ready to get a move with the wire wagon.”
“Listen to that, will you?” Dick groaned in mock distress; “bell-hops
on a wire gang! Oh, well; I suppose there’s no help for it.” Then, with
a quick jerk at the blankets: “Beat you to the creek.”
The Tourmaline, quieted at the camp site from a storming mountain
torrent to a sparkling little river of quick-water swirls and
crystal-clear pools, ran within a few yards of their tent. Whooping and
yelling like a pair of playful Indians they raced for their bath, Larry
stumbling at the edge and falling in with an inglorious splash, and
Dick taking a neat header a second later as the loser in the race. They
didn’t stay in long. Melted mountain snow, even in June, isn’t exactly
what you might call tepid; but so far, they had not once missed the
bracing morning plunge.
In the mess tent the fat Irish cook joshed them unmercifully for their
lateness, but they noticed that he had been keeping the bacon and corn
bread warm for them, and that the hashed-brown potatoes were freshly
fried; also that the coffee seemed just about as good as new. “Barney
wasn’t forgetting us,” Dick mumbled with his mouth full. “I’ll bet he
had his orders, too. It pays to be a do-whichit, Larry.”
The breakfast despatched they found Smith ready to start with his wire
outfit. Later, there would be regular telegraph and telephone lines
installed between Red Butte and Little Ophir, but in the meantime wire
communication had to be kept up between the different camps of the
construction force.
By an hour or so past noon, with the hole-diggers and pole-setters
pushing on ahead, and with a little auto-truck to carry material as
far as a truck could be operated, the wires were up and tested out to
a point just short of the canyon portal. Here the real difficulties
began. In some places iron brackets had to be set in the face of a
cliff, with the setter hanging in a rope sling from the top of things
to drill the holes in the rock.
“A fellow doesn’t need to be high-shy on a job of this kind,” Dick
asserted, looking up at one of the bracket men swinging like an
exploring spider at the end of his rope web from a cliff ninety or a
hundred feet high. Then to the wire boss: “What’ll you take to let me
set the next one, Smithy?”
Smith grunted.
“Nothing doing, son. It would cost me my summer’s job if your general
manager father ever heard of it. But you may take this coil of light
line up there, you two, if you think you’re good for the climb and the
tote.”
Lashing the coil of light rope to a carrying stick so that they could
share the load, Dick and Larry “hit the hill,” making a detour through
a small side gulch to come at the cliff summit from the rear. The
scrambling ascent accomplished, they found themselves at an elevation
commanding an extended view across the canyon to the northward.
A little way back from the cliff edge two men, with a pine-tree for a
snubbing stake, were slowly paying out a rope at the end of which the
spider-like bracket setter was dangling; and, lying on his stomach
at the brink, a third man was watching the descent and calling out
directions to the “anchor” man at the tree.
“Makes a fellow feel sort of creepy, doesn’t it?” said Dick, as they
took a cautious look over the edge into the gorge below, and Larry
grinned at him.
“Going to take back your brag about setting the next one?” he jibed
good-naturedly.
“I don’t take back anything,” Dick asserted stoutly; adding: “But if I
was only bluffing, it would be safe enough. Jack Smith wouldn’t come
within a thousand miles of letting me try.”
Larry squatted with his back to a tree. There was nothing further to
do until the bracket placers should move on to a new position.
“I’ve been thinking about that question you asked when you woke me up
this morning,” he said; “about what the Overland Central people will do
now that we’ve beaten them to it in the canyon.”
“Strikes me there isn’t much of anything for them to do,” Dick
countered. “_I’d_ say they’re knocked out.”
“Don’t fool yourself that way. Big corporations don’t give up so
easily. They’ve already spent a lot of money building their line down
from Burnt Canyon, and they are not going to throw all that money away,
not by a long shot.”
“But we’ve got our right-of-way in this canyon, and they’ll hardly try
to run us out of it by force.”
“They may not try it with guns, as Dad says the railroads used to do in
these right-of-way fights years ago. But there are other ways.”
“You’ve got something up your sleeve,” Dick remarked. “Suppose you
stick a pinch-bar under it and pry it loose.”
“I was just thinking,” Larry mused thoughtfully. “I guess Mr. Ackerman
and all of our folks would be sort of glad if they could find out just
exactly what the Overland Central crowd means to do. It might help
some, don’t you think?”
“Gee!” said Dick, getting up on his knees. “Say, Larry; you’re always
digging up something new out of the mud. What’s the great idea this
time?”
“I was wondering if it wouldn’t have been better if just one of us had
made that get-away last night, leaving the other to stay and find out
a few more things in the O. C. camp.”
Dick Maxwell looked away across the canyon and over into the mountain
labyrinth where they had had their adventure of the day before.
“I give you right on that, Larry,” he said. “Guess we’ve got an attack
of what Uncle Billy Starbuck would call ‘after-wit’――thinking of the
thing we ought to have done after it’s too late to do it.”
“I’ve just been wondering if it is too late,” was Larry’s reply. “I
wish we could see Mr. Ackerman for a few minutes. Only I suppose he
wouldn’t let us try it if we should ask him.”
“Let us try what? Don’t be a clam!” Dick put in impatiently. “Tell me
what’s eating you, can’t you?”
Larry turned his back upon the men who were holding the rope and in a
few low-toned words outlined the plan that was trying to shape itself
in his mind.
“Ripping――perfectly ripping!” was Dick’s enthusiastic approval. “Not a
bit of ivory there”――rapping with his knuckles upon the curly red head
of his tent-mate. “But say, could we lug all the stuff that we’d need?”
“The two of us could. But what I’m afraid of is that Mr. Ackerman will
say, No.”
“I wonder,” Dick mused. Then he remembered something that had
temporarily slipped his mind. “Hold up a minute; Mr. Ackerman has gone
to Red Butte to hurry up material and supplies, so cookee told me.
Smithy’s our present boss, and if we can swing him into line that’s all
we’ll need. Let’s go down and tackle him, right now!”
Twenty minutes later there was an earnest conference going on at the
foot of the cliff, with the young wire boss sitting in as the third
member.
“I don’t know about holding the bag for you fellows on anything like
that,” he demurred, when the plan had been laid before him. “It’s a
fine stunt, all right, if you could pull it off; but I haven’t any
right to authorize it――with Mr. Ackerman away. It would be a sort of
breach of discipline. If he were here, I doubt very much if he would
let you two kids take the risk.”
“That’s just the point,” Dick argued. “It’s just as Larry says; the
risk will be a lot less for us fellows than it would be for any of our
men――just because we _are_ kids.”
“How about it, Larry?” Smith asked, appealing to the big, fair-skinned
son of the Brewster crossing watchman.
“Oh, sure; there’s a risk, of course,” Larry conceded. “They’d be
pretty hot if they catch us at it. But it ought to be done, and if
we’re caught, we can be spared a lot better than a couple of your men.”
But young Smith was thinking of General Manager Maxwell and what he
might say if his son were permitted to take risks.
“As I get it, it’s your plan, Larry,” he said. “Can’t you pull it off
alone?”
Before Larry could answer, Dick broke in hotly.
“Not in a thousand years, Jack Smith! It’s Larry’s notion, all right,
but you couldn’t drag me out of it with a derrick!”
Smith looked away up the canyon to where some of the graders were
retreating to be out of the way of a blast about to be fired. When the
echoes of the explosion had died away he had made his decision.
“We’ll call it a Donovan chance and take a shot at it,” he announced
crisply. “Hike down to the mouth of the canyon and take the truck for
the drive back to camp. Tell the storekeeper that I sent you, and dig
around in his stock until you find what you need. Where will you strike
in?”
It was Larry who answered.
“Half a mile or so above here there’s a place where there are two big
boulders in the creek bed. We’ll cross on them.”
“Good. I’ll rig up a temporary terminal there while you’re getting the
stuff. Skip out now. Time’s valuable if you are going to accomplish
anything worth while.”
Since time was valuable, the two boys wasted none of it in the race
back to the trail-end where the auto-truck had been left; and with the
truck to facilitate things beyond the canyon portal they were soon at
the headquarters camp.
“Light marching order is the word,” Larry cautioned after the
store-room and its supplies had been thrown open to them. “It will be
at least two miles, the way we’ll have to go, with some pretty stiff
mountain climbing, and every pound of weight we can cut out will count.”
What they took out of the supply stores were a few dry-battery cells, a
coil of light cotton rope, two coils of the lightest insulated copper
wire, and a field set of telephone instruments. Dick was for taking two
sets, in case one should go bad on them, but Larry vetoed that.
“No,” he said; “we’re going to have plenty to lug as it is. That wire
is going to weigh a thousand pounds before we get it where we want it,
and, besides, there’s the grub to come, yet.”
Barney Daugherty, the camp cook, filled their haversacks for them;
hard-tack, sliced ham and some beans cooked in the can. As a final
addition to the outfit, Dick slung over his shoulder the field-glass
his father had given him, and the auto-truck was once more headed for
the canyon portal.
Arrived at the end of the driving possibilities they tumbled out of the
truck and the foot carry began. As soon as they shouldered their loads
they found out what they were in for. The wire, which was the chief
part of the burden, weighed like lead. But at the first turn in the
gorge they were met by one of the linemen whom Smith had sent down to
help them, and they were mighty glad to divide with him.
Reaching the crossing place at the two boulders they found Smith
ready for them. He had had his men cut down a few more trees to make
practicable foot-bridges, and a temporary telephone terminal had been
rigged under the shelter of the northern cliff.
“Quick work,” said the young wire boss approvingly, after the transfer
had been safely made. “How many men do you need to help you climb out
of the canyon with this stuff?”
“None,” said Larry promptly. “This is our job, and if we can’t put it
over without crippling your gang, we’ll cry quits, eh, Dick?”
Dick said, “Sure!” and Smith laughed.
“That’s the proper spirit,” he said. “I’m short-handed, anyway. I’ll
station somebody here to do the ‘listening in,’ but the field job’s
all your own. Go to it, and good luck to you.” And he went back to his
wire-stringing on the opposite side of the gorge.
After coupling the free ends of their wire coils to Smith’s terminal,
the two boys began to search for a place where the canyon wall could be
scaled. That, in itself, was something of a problem. In a toilsome hike
of half a mile up-stream they found nothing like a trail up which they
might hope to be able to carry the coils of wire. Moreover, distance
was a prime factor in their plan. They couldn’t afford to waste wire in
long detours.
“There’s only one thing for it,” said Larry. “I’m going to shin up
through that crevice we passed a few minutes ago, carrying the light
coil of rope. Then I’ll lower the line from the top of the cliff over
the terminal, and you can send the stuff up to me a piece at a time.”
This programme was carried out successfully, and after a half-hour’s
hard labor the first step in the arduous plan was a step accomplished.
From the cliff summit the back-country outlook was not so formidable.
They found themselves standing upon a high plateau, thickly wooded and
hilly, to be sure, but presenting no great difficulties to progress, so
far as they could determine.
“One good thing,” Dick commented, as they were munching a mid-afternoon
lunch on the cliff top; “these blessed wire coils are going to keep
on growing lighter as we go along. Makes me feel sort of Pollyanna
glad――that does. Gee! but that last one was a pull up the cliff! I
don’t see how you ever managed the first alone.”
“It had to be managed; that’s all,” said Larry, who was of those who
can always do what they have to do. “Like to have worn all the skin
off my hands, though, I’ll admit.”
With the hunger clamor quieted they took a compass bearing, shouldered
their burdens, and for a solid hour trudged away through the mountain
solitude, uncoiling the wire as they went and leaving a double trail
of it behind them. Smaller and smaller grew the coils, until at last,
as nearly as they could estimate, there were only a few hundred yards
left. Dick, never very strong on directions and localities, thought
they were lost; but Larry still held on grimly.
“It can’t be very much farther,” he insisted, “and I’m sure we’re
heading right. If the wire will only hold out――――”
They were climbing a little ridge as he said it, and the hollow coils
had dwindled to a mere nucleus in each. Dick was a few steps in the
lead, and as he topped the ridge he dropped his handful of wire and
flung himself flat.
What they saw from the ridge top was instructive, to say the least of
it. Directly below them lay the open valley with the Overland Central
material piles heaped in the center of it. Out of the valley to their
left they saw the gulch through which they had entered the day before,
and through which they had made their escape in the night.
When they had last passed through it the gulch had been merely a part
of the primeval wilderness. But now as much as they could see of it was
alive with an army of laborers fiercely at work laying down a railroad
track. Teams in an endless procession were delivering cross-ties and
rails from the piles in the valley; and off to the north they could
see black smoke rising above the trees betokening the presence of a
locomotive, or a steam shovel――or both.
For the first few minutes they could do nothing but stare open-mouthed.
It all seemed like magic. When they had been in this same valley
twenty-four hours earlier, there had been only the material piles and a
small squad of engineers and their helpers killing time. But now――――
[Illustration: For the first few minutes they could do nothing but
stare. It all seemed like magic]
Larry was the first to speak after they had swept the shut-in valley
with the field-glass, taking in all the details of the furious
activities.
“I told you they wouldn’t quit,” he remarked quietly. “With that rich
gold camp at the head of the Tourmaline yelling for a railroad, they
have too much at stake. They are still meaning to race us for Little
Ophir.”
“Lawzee――but I’m mighty glad we took another Donovan chance!” said
Dickie Maxwell, whispering as if he were afraid that the toiling army a
full half-mile distant might overhear him. “What do we do next?”
Larry was already unlimbering the field telephone set and coupling it
to the wires. For several minutes they got no reply to their signals;
but just as a great fear that their line might be grounded somewhere,
in spite of all the care they had taken, was beginning to grip them,
a faint voice came through the receiver. What it said was: “All
right――Smith talking――shoot.”
Larry tried to pass the ear-piece to his companion――just for the honor
of it; but Dick said, “No; this is your piece of pie. Eat it yourself.”
Larry put his lips to the mouthpiece of the transmitter.
“This is Donovan――can you hear me?――all right. We’re on a ridge
just above the O. C. camp and overlooking it.... Yes, we’re hid in the
woods and perfectly safe; but listen: the O. C. people have brought in
a force twice as big as ours and they are laying track to beat the band
down the gulch that leads to our canyon. Get that?”
“Got you,” came the faint voice; and then: “Hold the wire open a
minute.” Presently the voice began again and went on for some little
time, and when it stopped, Larry took his turn at asking for a hold.
“It’s Smithy talking,” he told Dick hurriedly. “Mr. Ackerman is with
him――just got back from Red Butte. Smith says that Mr. Ackerman says
it’s mighty important to know just what the O. C.’s present plan is;
what they’re going to do when they get to our canyon. He wants us
to find out if we can, but insists that we mustn’t get into danger.
Wait――they’re talking again.”
This time the receiver droned away for a full minute. At the end Larry
said, “All right; maybe we’ll have to wait until after dark. Yes, sir,
we’ll be all kinds of careful. Good-by.”
“More cautions,” he explained. “It was Mr. Ackerman, himself, this
time. He seems awfully anxious for fear we’ll get into trouble. Yet he
says it’s very important that our folks should know as soon as possible
just what the O. C. means to do. You heard what I told him.”
The first thing they did after making this report was to go over the
field again, foot by foot, as you might say, while the daylight lasted
and with the help of the excellent field-glass. Larry jotted down the
findings in his note-book as Dick reported them.
“That _is_ a steam shovel over yonder; I can see the puffs of steam.
But there is a locomotive, too; that means that they’ve got their
connecting track that near. Now down in the valley: I’m counting
the men loading the wagons ... fifty-four of ’em. Yep; more wagons
coming in all the time with ties and rails; I can count eighteen of
’em besides those going and coming in the gulch. Say, Larry, couldn’t
we slip down there where the working gangs are and maybe find out
something that way? I should think we might be able to lose ourselves
in a crowd that big.”
Larry looked at his watch.
“Six o’clock; they’ll be changing shifts before long. It’ll be easier
to do it then.”
They waited, snatching a bite of supper in the meantime. While they
were eating, the whistle of a donkey engine sounded, the working shifts
were changed, and carbide flares began to flame out in the gulch below.
“Time’s up,” said Dick, cramming in the last mouthful. “We’d better be
crawling down the hill before it gets too dark.”
They proceeded to do it. By making a short detour to the left they
found scrub thickets enough to mask their descent, and in the gulch
itself there was also timber cover enough to let them come within easy
listening distance of the track-laying battle. The big, bearded chief
of construction of the Overland Central――the man who had captured
and locked them up the day before――was walking up and down the line,
shouting out orders to his foremen, and they knew what to expect if
they should run afoul of him. So they kept themselves hidden pretty
carefully in the scrub timber growth.
After a bit――after it had grown quite dark――the chief strode away
toward the valley camp and they breathed easier. They could hear the
men talking as they worked, but there was nothing in the talk to tell
them what they wanted to know.
“We’ve got to do something better than this,” Larry whispered in Dick’s
ear. Then: “Say――look at that water boy. He must have bought his outfit
in the same store that we did ours.”
Taking him by and large, the water boy in question might have passed
for Larry’s own brother, a year or so younger. He was an over-sized,
curly-haired chap in corduroys, flannel shirt, and a battered campaign
hat. Also, he was wearing a pair of engineer’s lace-boots――cast-offs,
they guessed they were, since they seemed to be about three sizes too
large for the boy.
When they first saw him he was walking up and down with his bucket of
water and dipper to let the workmen drink as they called to him; and he
had just passed for the third time, going toward camp with the bucket
empty, when Larry again called attention to him.
“If I could only swap jobs with that kid for an hour or so, I’ll bet I
could find out something,” he whispered. Then: “What’s he doing now?”
In the flare of the working torches they could still see the boy with
the big boots. He was stumbling along up the newly laid track as if he
were half asleep.
“Bet you that kid’s just out of bed,” Dick muttered. “Been sleeping all
day and still hasn’t had enough. Now look at that, will you?”
“That” was the spectacle of the boy hiding his bucket behind a track
tool box and shuffling aside under the trees to stretch out upon the
ground and compose himself to take a nap. Larry started. “If I only
had that old hat of his!” he breathed.
“Let me!” Dick hissed; but Larry put him firmly back into the shadows.
“Not much!――this is a homely man’s job, and you’re too pretty. Stay
here and listen to every word that’s said.” And with that he glided
away toward the somnolent water carrier.
Dick Maxwell, watching with all his eyes, presently saw an arm reach
out of the shadows toward the sleeper, and then saw, or thought he
could see, a cap replace the battered hat that lay beside the water
boy. A minute later the hat, with a shuffling figure under it, came in
sight, and the figure was reaching for the empty water bucket.
It was at this climaxing instant that a shout went up――“Water boy!” The
sleeper under the trees never stirred, but the figure with the bucket,
stumbling along so exactly like the real owner of the hat that Dick,
himself, could hardly realize that it was Larry, answered the call.
The shouter was one of the assistant engineers, and he was standing
within a few yards of Dick’s hiding place. As Larry, bucket in hand,
and with the borrowed hat pulled down over his eyes, came up, the
engineer scribbled a line on a leaf of his pocket note-book, tore the
leaf out and thrust it at Larry with a crisp order.
“Here, boy; drop that bucket and run up to the office with this. Bring
the blue-print they’ll give you back to me. Chase your feet now, and
don’t be all night about it!”
Dick held his breath while the transfer of the bit of paper was being
made. It didn’t seem possible that Larry could go unrecognized. But the
flare lights were a bit uncertain, and before the anxious watcher could
do more than gasp, Larry had turned and was running up the track.
Larry, himself, cool, collected, and holding his excitement down with
a firm grip, was none too sure he could carry it off until he had the
piece of paper safely in hand and was hurrying away with it. But with
the one risk left behind, there was a sharper one on ahead. The field
office would be well lighted, and, worse than that, the fierce-eyed
chief might be there. Also, in the interval the real water boy might
wake up and show himself. It was a moment for quick work, and for
nothing else.
Running like a sprinter trying to break a record, Larry soon reached
the camp. A passing teamster directed him and he stumbled into the
engineers’ office and gave the note to the first man he came to; a
draftsman working over a trestle-board table. There were three other
men in the office and the big chief was one of them. They were talking,
and they paid no attention to a mere messenger boy standing aside while
the draftsman hunted for the required blue-print. All ears for the
hoped-for information, this is what Larry heard.
“Well, it’s just as I’ve been sayin’; we’re all handing it to you,
Chief. If you hadn’t made that second survey on the north side of the
canyon, this quick move of Ackerman’s would have blocked us,”――this
from one of the three whom Larry recognized as the boss bridge builder.
“And your scheme of getting around the cliffs with a temporary trestle
in the bed of the river is all right. We can do it, using the timbers
and steel we were going to use in the bridge.”
“That’s all right for you, Sedgwick,” was the growling answer, “but I’m
still sore about letting those kids get away last night. That was a
bonehead trick, and it’s what did us up. The next time I get hold of
any of Ackerman’s spies, kids or no kids, they’ll go to jail!”
Larry didn’t wait to hear any more. He grabbed the blue-print the
draftsman had found for him and ran with it as if all the gray timber
wolves in the Timanyonis were at his heels. Almost by a miracle, as
it seemed, he had got the needed information. The rival railroad was
abandoning its original plan of usurping the Short Line’s right-of-way,
and was preparing to build a paralleling line on the other side of the
canyon!
Two minutes after he had delivered the blue-print to the waiting
assistant on the grade, and had shuffled off with the empty water
bucket, Larry, the battered hat restored to its sleeping owner and his
own cap recovered, was at Dick’s elbow.
“Come, quick!” he whispered; “we haven’t a minute to lose!” and at the
end of a heart-breaking, wind-cutting scramble up the steep ridge they
were once more in touch with their telephone line.
The answer to Larry’s call came quickly, and between gasps he told
the story of their discovery. The reply, which came from Smith, was
an order from headquarters. Larry repeated it for Dick as he was
disconnecting the field set from the wires.
“Our job’s done,” he announced. “We’re to bring this field set in with
us and leave the wire for a couple of the men to reel up to-morrow,
dragging the ends back with us a piece so that our men won’t have to
show themselves to that crowd down below. When we get in, we’re to
report at once to Mr. Ackerman at the new ‘front.’”
Dark as it was, the return over the hills of the plateau was merely
a bit of routine. All they had to do was to follow their wires, like
cave explorers retracing a twine trail, and by a late bed-time they had
reached a little widening in the canyon of the Tourmaline where the
Short Line chief had established his new headquarters.
The sober-faced chief’s eyes were twinkling when the two boys finished
telling the story of the afternoon’s adventures.
“You two fellows are getting altogether too much notoriety,” he said,
with what might have been taken――but for the eye-twinkling――for grave
severity. And then: “Whose idea was it?――this wire-scouting scheme?”
“Larry’s,” said Dick promptly, before Larry could open his mouth.
“I’m charging it up to both of you. As it turns out, it is exactly what
we needed to know; though if I had been here, I shouldn’t have allowed
you two ‘cubs’ to undertake anything so full of risk. And you shouldn’t
have undertaken it without orders. For your breach of discipline I’m
going to send you ahead with the instrumentmen to-morrow. Maybe that
will keep you out of mischief for a while.”
“Did he mean it?” Larry asked, a few minutes later when they were
piling into a couple of bunks at the back of the newly erected
engineers’ shack, “about disciplining us?”
“Never in the world!” Dick chuckled, rolling himself into his blankets.
“He’s tickled pink over what you thought of――and did――and I’ll bet a
chicken worth fifty dollars that you’ll get a boost at headquarters
that’ll make your curly old head swim. Gee! but you’re the lucky kid!”
“Over what _I_ did?” growled Larry drowsily. “I like that! If you don’t
quit cutting yourself out of things, the way you’ve been doing, I’m
going to lick you, one of these days. Good-night.”
And with a yawning “Ah-yow!” that was like the plaint of a hungry
yellow dog he was asleep.