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Page 9
"Hawkins," called Tom, as a Mexican boy led the horses away to the shade
of a stable tent, "I see you have some men idle."
"Nine-tenths of 'em are idle," replied the superintendent of
construction. "I warned you, Mr. Reade, that our gangs would soon eat up
the little work that you left us. Out there, by the last cave-in you'll
see that Foreman Payson, has about fifty men going. They'll be through
within an hour."
"And the material, even if delivered within the promised time, is still
two days away," remarked Reade. "I'll confess that I don't like to see
the railroad lose so much through paying men for idle time."
"It can't be helped, sir," replied the superintendent. "Of course, if
you like, you can set the laborers at work shoveling in more dirt at the
points where the last slide of the quicksand occurred. But, then,
shoveling dirt in, without the timbers and the hollow steel piles will
do no good," continued Hawkins, with a shake of his head. "It would be
worse than wasted work."
"I know all that," Tom admitted. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Hawkins, I
wouldn't mind the men's idleness quite so much if it weren't that the
pay train comes in this afternoon. An idle man, not over-nice about his
habits, and with a lot of money in his pockets, is a source of danger.
We're going to have five hundred such danger spots as soon as the men
are paid off."
"Don't know that, sir!" demanded Superintendent Hawkins. "The town of
Paloma is just dancing on sand-paper, it's so uneasy about getting its
hand into the pile of more than thirty-eight thousand dollars that the
pay train is going to bring in this afternoon."
"I know," nodded Tom rather gloomily. "I hate to see the men fleeced as
they're likely to be fleeced to-night. Some of our men will be so badly
done up that it will be a week before they get back to work--unless
there is some way that we can stop the fleecing."
"There isn't any such way," declared Superintendent Hawkins, with an air
of conviction.
"You've surely been around rough railroading camps enough to know that,
Mr. Reade."
"I've seen a good deal of the life, Hawkins," Tom answered, "but of
course I don't know it all."
"Yet you know that you can't hope to stop railroad jacks from spending
their money in their own way. The saloons in Paloma will take in
thousands of dollars from our lads to-night and all day to-morrow. The
gamblers will swindle them out of a whole lot more. Day after to-morrow,
Mr. Reade, you wouldn't be able to borrow twenty dollars from
our whole force."
"It's a shame," burst from Tom indignantly, as the three turned to gaze
westward across the desert. "These men work as hard as any toilers in
the world. They receive good wages. Yet where do you find a railroad
jack who, after years and years of toil on these burning deserts, has
two or three hundred dollars of his own saved?"
Hawkins shrugged his shoulders.
"I know all about it," he responded, "and I grow angry every time I
think about it. Yet how is one going to protect these, men against
themselves?"
"I believe there's a way," spoke Tom confidently.
"I hope you can find it, then, Mr. Reade," retorted Hawkins skeptically.
"At any rate, I'm going to try."
"What are you going to do, Mr. Reade?" demanded the superintendent
curiously.
"You'll be with me, won't you?" coaxed Tom.
"You'll stand with us, shoulder to shoulder."
"I certainly will, Mr. Reade!"
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