The Young Engineers in Arizona by H. Irving Hancock


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Page 2

"Coming over to the hotel this afternoon?" continued Duff.

"I--I--" hesitated Clarence.

"Coming, did you say?" persisted Duff gently.

"I shall have to see my mail first. There may be letters--"

"Oh," nodded Duff, with just a trace of irony as the younger man again
hesitated.

"Life is not all playtime for me, you know," Farnsworth continued,
looking rather shamer-faced. "I--er--have some business affairs
attention at times."

"Oh, don't try to join me at the hotel this if you have more interesting
matters in prospect," smiled the gambler.

Again Clarence flushed. He looked up to Jim Duff as a thorough "man of
the world," and wanted to stand well in the gambler's good opinion.
Clarence Farnsworth was, as yet, too green to know that, too often, the
man who has seen much of the world has seen only its seamy and worthless
side. Possibly Farnsworth was destined to learn this later on--after the
gambler had coolly fleeced him.

"Before long," Farnsworth went on, changing the subject, "I must get out
on the desert and take a look at the quicksand that the railroad folks
are trying to cross."

"The railroad people will probably never cross that quicksand," remarked
Jim Duff, the lids closing over his eyes for a moment.

"Oh, I don't know about that," continued Farnsworth argumentatively.

"I think I do," declared Jim Duff easily. "My belief, Farnsworth, is
that the railroad people might dig up the whole of New Mexico, transport
the dirt here and dump it on top of that quicksand, and still the
quicksand would settle lower and lower and the tracks would still break
up and disappear. There's no bottom to that quicksand."

"Of course you ought to know all about it, Duff," Clarence made haste to
answer. "You've lived here for years, and you know all about this
section of the country."

That didn't quite suit the gambler. What he sought to do was to raise
an argument with the young man--who still had some money left.

"What makes you think, Farnsworth, that the railroad can win out with
the desert and lay tracks across the quicksand? That's a bad quicksand,
you know. It has been called the 'Man-killer.' Many a prospector or
cow-puncher has lost his life in trying to get over that sand."

"The real Man-killer quicksand is a mile to the south of where the
tracks go, isn't it?" asked Farnsworth.

"Yes; and the first party of railway surveyors who went over the line
for their track thought they had dodged the Man-killer. Yet what
they'll find, in the end, is that the Man-killer is a bad affair, and
that it extends, under the earth, in many directions and for long
distances. I am certain that railway tracks will never be laid over any
part of the Man-killer."

"Perhaps not," assented Clarence meekly.

"What makes you think that the railroad can ever get across the Man-
killer?" persisted Duff.

"Why, for one thing, the very hopeful report of the new engineers who
have taken charge."

"Humph!" retorted Duff, as though that one word of contempt disposed of
the matter.

"Reade and Hazelton are very good engineers, are they not?" inquired
young Farnsworth.

"Humph! A pair of mere boys," sneered Jim Duff.

"Young fellows of about my age, you mean?" asked Farnsworth.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 15:04