The Young Engineers in Arizona Part 19

"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 gla.s.s 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 compet.i.tor."

"A compet.i.tor!" 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.serted boldly.

"Still, I don't suppose you want me out here."