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Page 3
"Of your age?" repeated Duff, in a tone of wonder. "No! You're a man.
Reade and Hazelton, as I've told you, are mere boys. They're not of
age. They've never voted."
"Oh, I had no idea that they were as young as that," replied Clarence,
much pleased at hearing himself styled a man. "But these young
engineers come from one of the Colorado, railroads, don't they!"
"I wouldn't be surprised," nodded the gambler. "However, the Man-killer
is no task for boys. It is a job for giants to put through, if the job
ever can be finished."
"Then, if it's so difficult, why doesn't the road shift the track by two
or three miles?" inquired Clarence.
"You certainly are a newcomer 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."
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