2 files changed, 7154 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/azeng10.txt b/old/azeng10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0514d20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/azeng10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7154 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Young Engineers in Arizona, by H. Irving Hancock
+#2 in our series by H. Irving Hancock
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Young Engineers in Arizona
+       Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand
+
+Author: H. Irving Hancock
+
+Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8153]
+[This file was first posted on June 20, 2003]
+[Date last updated: May 1, 2005]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN ARIZONA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sean Pobuda
+
+
+
+
+The Young Engineers in Arizona Or Laying Tracks on the Man-killer
+Quicksand
+
+By H. Irving Handcock
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MAN OF "CARD HONOR"
+
+
+"I'll wager you ten dollars that my fly gets off the mirror before yours
+does."
+
+"I'll take that bet, friend."
+
+The dozen or so of waiting customers lounging in Abe Morris's barber
+shop looked up with signs of renewed life.
+
+"I'll make it twenty," continued the first speaker.
+
+"I follow you," assented the second speaker.
+
+Truly, if men must do so trivial a thing as squander their money on idle
+bets, here was a novel enough contest.
+
+Each of the bettors sat in a chair, tucked up in white to the chin.
+Each was having his hair cut.
+
+At the same moment a fly had lighted on each of the mirrors before the
+two customers.
+
+The man who had offered the bet was a well known local character--Jim
+Duff by name, by occupation one of the meanest and most dishonorable
+gamblers who had ever disgraced Arizona by his presence.
+
+There is an old tradition about "honest gamblers" and "players of square
+games."  The man who has been much about the world soon learns to
+understand that the really honest and "square" gambler is a creature of
+the imagination.  The gambler makes his living by his wits, and he who
+lives by anything so intangible speedily finds the road to cheating and
+trickery.
+
+Jim Duff had been no exception.  His reputation was such that he could
+find few men among the residents of this part of Arizona who would meet
+him at the gaming table.  He plied his trade mostly among simple-minded
+tourists from the east--the class of men who are known in Arizona as
+"tenderfeet."
+
+Rumor had it that Jim Duff, in addition to his many years of unblushing
+cheating for a living, had also shot and killed three men in the past on
+as many different occasions.
+
+Yet he was a sleek, well-groomed fellow, tall and slim, and, in the
+matter of years, somewhere in his forties.  Duff always dressed well--
+with a foundation of the late styles of the east, with something of the
+swagger of the plains added to his raiment.
+
+"Stranger, you might as well hand me your money now," drawled Duff,
+after a few moments had passed.  "It'll save time."
+
+"Your fly hasn't hopped yet," retorted the second man, with the air and
+tone of one who could afford to lose thousands on such stupid bets.
+
+The second man was of the kind on which Jim Duff fattened his purse.
+Clarence Farnsworth, about twenty-five years of age, was as verdant a
+"tenderfoot" as had lately graced Paloma, Arizona, with his presence.
+
+Even the name of Clarence had moved so many men to laughter in this
+sweltering little desert town that Farnsworth had lately chopped his
+name to "Clare."  Yet this latter had proved even worse; it sounded too
+nearly like a girl's name.
+
+So far as his financial condition went, Clarence had the look of one who
+possessed money to spend.  He was well-dressed, lived at the Mansion
+House, often hired automobiles, entertained his friends lavishly, and
+was voted a good enough fellow, though a simpleton.
+
+"My fly's growing skittish, stranger," smiled Jim Duff.  "He's on the
+point of moving.  You'd better whisper to your fly."
+
+"I believe, friend," rejoined Clarence, "that my fly is taking nap.  He
+appears to be sound asleep.  You certainly picked the more healthy fly."
+
+Jim Duff gave his barber an all but imperceptible nudge in one elbow.
+Though he gave no sign in return, that barber understood, and shifted
+his shears in a way that, even at distance, alarmed the fly on the
+mirror before Duff.
+
+"Buzz-zz!"  The fly in front of the gambler took wing and vanished
+toward the rear of the store.
+
+Some of the Arizona men looking on smiled knowingly.  They had realized
+from the start that young Farnsworth had stood no show of winning the
+stupid wager.
+
+"You win," stated young Clarence, in a tone that betrayed no annoyance.
+
+Drawing a roll of bills from his pocket, he fumbled until he found a
+twenty.  This he passed to Duff, sitting in the next chair.
+
+"You're not playing in luck to-day," smiled Duff gently, as he tucked
+away the money in one of his coat pockets.  "You're a good sportsman,
+Farnsworth, at any rate."
+
+"I flatter myself that I am," replied Clarence, blushing slightly.
+
+Jim Duff continued calmly puffing at the cigar that rested between his
+teeth.  They were handsome teeth, though, in some way, they made one
+think of the teeth of a vicious dog.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"Why, yes; I trust so," replied the stranger, after a quick, keen look
+at Duff.  Undoubtedly this newcomer was accustomed to judging men
+quickly after seeing them.
+
+"These boy engineers!" chucked Duff.  "Humph!"
+
+"Humph!" agreed the stranger.
+
+At this moment two bronzed-looking, erect young men came tramping down
+the sidewalk together.  Each looked the picture of health, of courage,
+of decision.  Both wore the serviceable khaki now so common in surveying
+camps in warm climates.  Below the knee the trousers were confined by
+leggings. Above the belt blue flannel shirts showed, yet these were of
+excellent fabric and looked trim indeed.  To protect their heads and to
+shade their eyes as much as possible from the glare of Arizona desert
+sand, these young men wore sombreros of the type common in the Army.
+
+"This looks like a good place, Harry," said the taller of the two young
+men.  "Suppose we go inside."
+
+They stepped into the barber shop together, nodding pleasantly to all
+inside.  Then, hanging up their sombreros, they passed on to unoccupied
+chairs.
+
+Just in the act of passing out, Jim Duff had stepped back to admit them.
+
+"They're Reade and Hazelton, the very young engineers that the railroad
+has just put in charge of the Man-killer job," whispered one knowing
+citizen of Paloma.  The news quickly spread about the barber shop.
+
+Jim Duff already knew the boys by sight, since they were stopping at the
+Mansion House.  He uttered an almost inaudible "humph!" then passed on
+outside.
+
+Neither Tom Reade nor Harry Hazelton heard this exclamation, nor would
+they have paid any heed to it if they had.
+
+Yes; the two young men were our friends of old, the young engineers.
+Our readers are wholly familiar with Tom and Harry as far back as their
+grammar school days in the good old town of Gridley.  Tom and Harry were
+members of that famous sextet of schoolboy athletes known at home as
+Dick & Co.  The exploits of Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, as of Dick
+Prescott, Dave Darrin, Greg Holmes and Dan Dalzell, have been fully
+told, first in the "Grammar School Boys Series," and then in the "High
+School Boys Series."
+
+After the close of the "High School Boys Series" the further adventures
+of Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes are told in the "West Point Series,"
+while all that befell Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell has already been found
+in the pages of the "Annapolis Series."
+
+In the preceding volume of this series, "The Young Engineers in
+Colorado," our readers were made familiar with the real start in working
+life made by Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton.  Back in the old High School
+days Reade and Hazelton had been fitting themselves to become civil
+engineers.  They began their real work in the east, and had made good in
+sterner work in the mountains in Colorado.
+
+Our readers all know how Tom and Harry opened their careers in Colorado
+by becoming "cub engineers" with one of the field camps of the S. B. &
+L. railroad.  Taken only on trial, they had rapidly made good, and had
+earned the confidence of the chief engineer in charge of the work.
+When, owing to the sudden illness of both the chief engineer and his
+principal assistant the road's work had been crippled, Tom and Harry had
+had the courage as well as the opportunity to take hold, assume the
+direction, and complete the building of the S. B. & L. within the time
+required by the road's charter.
+
+Had the young engineers failed, the S. B. & L., under the terms granted
+by the state, might have been seized and sold at public auction.  In
+that case, the larger, and rival road, the W. C. & A., stood ready to
+buy out the S. B. & L. and reap the profits that the latter road had
+planned to earn.  Not only had the young engineers succeeded in
+overcoming all natural obstacles, but, in a series of wonderful
+adventures, they had defeated the plots of agents of the W. C. & A.
+From that time on Tom and Harry had been famous in Colorado railroad
+circles.
+
+After the S. B. & L. had been finished and put in operation, Tom Reade
+had remained with the railroad for several months, still serving as
+chief engineer, with Harry Hazelton as his trusted and dependable
+assistant.
+
+Now, at last, they had been lured away from the S. B. & L. by the offer
+of a new chance to overcome difficulties of the sort that all fighting
+engineers love to encounter.  The Arizona, Gulf & New Mexico Railroad--
+more commonly known as the A., G. & N. M.--while laying its tracks in an
+attempt at record-beating, had come afoul of the problem of the
+quicksand, as already outlined.  Three different sets of engineers had
+attempted the feat of filling up the quicksand, only to abandon it.
+
+There was little doubt that the Colthwaite Construction Company, a
+contracting firm with years of successful experience, could have,
+"stopped" the quicksand, but this Chicago firm wanted far more money for
+the job than the railroad people felt they could afford to spend.
+
+So, in a moment of doubt, and harassed by troubles, one of the directors
+of the A., G. & N. M. had remembered the names and the performances of
+Tom and Harry.  This director of the Arizona road, being a friend of
+President Newnham, of the S. B. & L. road, had written the latter,
+asking whether the services of Tom and Harry could be secured.  The
+reply had been in the affirmative, and Tom and Harry had speedily
+traveled down into Arizona.  In the few days they had been at this
+little town of Paloma, they had gone thoroughly over the ground, they
+had studied the problem, and had expressed their opinion that the job
+could be put through creditably at a cost not exceeding a quarter of a
+million dollars.
+
+"Go to it, then!" General Manager Curtis had replied.  "You have our
+road's credit at your command, and we look to you to make good.  You are
+both very young, but Newnham's word is quite good enough for us."
+
+The day before this story opens this general manager had boarded one of
+the rough-looking construction trains and had gone back to the road's
+headquarters.
+
+As they sat in the barber shop now Tom and Harry were quite unaware of
+the interested notice they were receiving.  This was not surprising, for
+both were good, sane, wholesome American boys, with no more than the
+average share of conceit, and neither believed himself to be as much of
+a wonder as some experienced railroad men credited them with being.
+
+"Stranger, excuse me, but you're Reade, aren't you?" inquired one of the
+men of Paloma who was present.
+
+"Yes, sir," nodded Tom, looking up pleasantly from the weekly paper that
+he had been scanning.
+
+"You're head of the new job on the Man-killer, aren't you?" questioned
+the same man.  By this time every man in the barber shop was secretly
+watching the young engineers, a fact that was plain to Harry Hazelton,
+as he glanced up from a magazine.
+
+"Yee, sir," Tom answered again.  "In a way I'm at the head of it, but my
+friend, Hazelton, is really as much at the head as I am.  We are
+partners, and we work together in everything."
+
+"Do you think, Reade, that you're going to win out on the job?" inquired
+another man.
+
+"Yes, sir," nodded Tom.
+
+"You seem very confident about it," smiled another.
+
+"It's just a way we have," Tom assented good-naturedly.  "We always try
+to keep our nerve and our confidence with us."
+
+"Yet you are really sure?"
+
+"Oh!  yes," Reade answered.  "We have looked the quicksand over, and we
+feel sure that we see a way of stopping the Man-killer, and forcing it
+to sustain railroad ties and steel rails."
+
+"How are you going; to go about it?" questioned still another interested
+citizen.  These men of Paloma had good reason for being interested.
+When the iron road was finished, Paloma would be an intimate part of the
+now outside world.  It was certain that Paloma real estate would rise to
+three or four times its present value.
+
+"I know you'll excuse us," replied Tom, still speaking pleasantly, "if
+we don't go into precise details."
+
+"Then you are going to make a secret of your plans?" inquired another
+barber-shop idler.  His tone expressed merely curiosity; Arizona men are
+proverbially as polite as they are frank.
+
+"We're somewhat secretive--yes, sir," Tom replied.  "That is only
+because we regard the method we are going to use as being mainly the
+concern of the A., G. & N. M.  No offense meant, sir, either."
+
+"No offense taken," replied the late questioner.
+
+Tom had already, within a few minutes, made an excellent impression on
+the majority of these Arizona men present.
+
+As to the other newcomer, who had lately spoken so warmly of the
+Colthwaite Company, he was now silent, apparently greatly absorbed in a
+three-days-old newspaper that he had picked up.  Yet he managed to cast
+more than one covert glance at the boys.
+
+"I have heard both of you young men spoken of most warmly, as real
+engineers who are going to solve the problem of the Man-killer,"
+declared Clarence Farnsworth, as, alighting from the barber's chair, he
+strolled past the pair.
+
+"Thank you," nodded Tom, with all his usual simple good nature.
+
+"If you make a successful job of it is will be a splendid thing for you
+in your professional careers," continued Farnsworth, rather aimlessly.
+
+"Undoubtedly," nodded Harry.
+
+The stranger who had held so much converse with Jim Duff was through
+with the barber at last.  Though the day was scorchingly hot in this
+desert town, the stranger stepped along briskly until he had reached the
+hotel.
+
+The Mansion House would scarcely have measured up to the hotel standards
+of large cities.  Yet it was a very good hotel, indeed, for this part of
+Arizona, and the proprietor did all in his power for the comfort of his
+guests.
+
+As the stranger ascended the steps to the broad porch he caught sight of
+Jim Duff, approaching the doorway from the inside.
+
+"Oh, how do you do?" was Duff's greeting.  "Hot, isn't it?"
+
+"Very," nodded the stranger.
+
+"I usually have my luncheon in my room, which is large and airy,"
+continued Duff.  "As I dislike to eat alone, I have ordered the table
+spread for two. I shall be very glad of your company, stranger, if you
+care to honor me."
+
+"That is kind of you," nodded the other.  "I shall accept with much
+pleasure, for I, too, like to eat in good company."
+
+After a little more conversation the two ascended to Duff's room on the
+next floor.  Certainly it was the largest and most comfortable guest
+room in the hotel, and was furnished in good taste.  The main apartment
+was set as a gentlemen's lounging room, Duff's bedroom furniture being
+in a little room at the rear.
+
+Hardly had Duff pressed the bell button before there came a tap at the
+door.  One waiter brought in a table for two, with the napery.  This he
+quickly arranged.  As he turned toward the door two other waiters
+entered with dishes containing a dainty meal for a hot day.
+
+"You may arrange everything and then leave us, John," directed Duff.
+Soon the two new acquaintances were alone together, the gambler serving
+the light meal with considerable grace.
+
+"How long have you been with the Colthwaite Company?" asked Jim Duff
+presently.
+
+"I didn't say that I had ever been with the Colthwaite Company," smiled
+the stranger.
+
+"No," admitted the gambler; "but I took that much for granted."
+
+Again the eyes of the two men met in an exchange of keen looks, Then the
+stranger laughed.
+
+"Mr. Duff, I realize that it is a waste of time to try to conceal rather
+evident facts from you.  I am Frederick Ransom, a special agent for the
+Colthwaite Company."
+
+"You are down here to get the contract for filling up the Man-killer
+quicksand?" Duff continued, with an air of polite curiosity.
+
+"The contract is not to be awarded," Ransom answered.  "The A., G. & N.
+M. has decided to do the work itself, with the assistance of two young
+engineers who have been retained."
+
+"Reade and Hazelton," nodded Jim Duff.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"They may fail--are almost sure to do so.  Then, of course, Mr. Ransom,
+you will have a very excellent chance of securing the contract for the
+Colthwaite Company."
+
+"Why, yes; if the young men do fail."
+
+"Will you pardon a stranger's curiosity, Mr. Ransom?  Have you laid your
+plans yet for the way in which the young men are to fail?"
+
+From most strangers this direct questioning would have been offensive.
+Jim Duff, however, from long experience in fleecing greenhorns, had
+acquired a manner and way, of speaking that stood him in good stead.
+
+After a moment's half-embarrassed silence Fred Ransom burst into a laugh
+that was wholly good-natured.
+
+"Mr. Duff, You are unusually clever at reading other's motives," he
+replied.
+
+"I went to school as a youngster, and learned how to read the pages of
+open books," the gambler confessed modestly.  "So you have, as yet, no
+plan for compelling the young engineers to fail and quit at the Man-
+killer?"
+
+This was such a direct, comprehensive question that Fred Ransom remained
+silent for some moments before he admitted:
+
+"No; as yet I haven't been able to form a plan."
+
+"Then engage me to help you," spoke Jim Duff slowly, coolly.  "I know
+the country here, and the people.  I know where to lay my finger on men
+who can be trusted to do unusual things.  I shall come high, Mr. Ransom,
+but I am really worth the money.  Talk it over with me, and convince me
+that your company will be sufficiently liberal in return for large
+favors."
+
+"Oh, the Colthwaite Company would be liberal enough," protested Ransom,
+"and quick to hand out the cash, at that."
+
+"I took that for granted," smiled Duff, showing his white teeth. "Your
+people, the Colthwaites, have always been accustomed to paying for
+favors that require unusual talent, some courage-and perhaps a
+persistency of the shooting kind."
+
+Then the two rascals, who now thoroughly understood each other, fell to
+plotting. An hour later the outlook was dark, indeed, for the success of
+Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+DUFF ASSERTS HIS "RIGHTS"
+
+
+"We've a hard afternoon ahead of us, Harry," remarked Tom Reade, as the
+engineer chums finished the noonday meal in the public dining room of
+the Mansion House.
+
+"Pshaw!  We'll have more real work to do after our material arrives,"
+rejoined young Hazelton.  "We're promised the material in four days.  If
+we get it in a fortnight we will be lucky."
+
+"That might be true on some railroads," smiled Tom.  "But Mr. Ellsworth,
+the general manager of the A., G. & N. M., is a hustler, if I ever met
+one. When we wired to him what we needed, he wired back that enough of
+the material would be here within four days to keep us busy for some
+time.  I believe Mr. Ellsworth never talks until he knows what he's
+talking about."
+
+"Well, I hope you can find some work for the men to do this afternoon,"
+murmured Harry, as the two young engineers rose from table.  "Hawkins,
+our superintendent of construction, has about five hundred mechanics and
+laborers who will soon need work."
+
+"Yes," agreed Tom.  "The men took the jobs with the understanding that
+their pay would run on."
+
+"The day's wages for five hundred workmen is a big item of loss when
+we're delayed," mused Hazelton.
+
+"There's another consideration that's even worse than the loss," Tom
+went on in a low voice.  "The pay train will be here this afternoon and
+the men will have a lot of money by evening.  This town of Paloma is
+going to be wide open to-night in the effort to get the money away from
+our five hundred men."
+
+"We can't stop that," sighed Harry.  "We have no control over the way in
+which the workmen choose to spend their money."
+
+"Want me to tell you a secret?" whispered Tom mysteriously.
+
+"Yes, if it's an interesting one," smiled Harry.
+
+"Very good, then.  I know I can't actually interfere with the way the
+men spend their money.  But I'm going to give them some earnest advice
+about avoiding fellows who would fleece them out of their wages."
+
+"Go slowly, Tom!" warned Hazelton, opening his eyes rather wide.  "Don't
+put yourself in bad with the men, or they may quit you in a body."
+
+"Let them," retorted Tom, with one of his easy smiles.  "If these men
+throw up their work General Manager Ellsworth will know where to find
+others for us.  Few of our men are skilled workers.  We can find
+substitutes for most of them anywhere that laborers can be found."
+
+"But you've no right--"
+
+"Of one thing you may be very sure, Harry.  I'll take pains not to step
+over the line of my own rights, and not to step on the rights of the men
+who are working for us.  What I mean to do is to offer them some very
+straight talk.  I shall also warn them that we are quite ready to
+discharge any foolish fellows who may happen to go on sprees and unfit
+themselves for our work.  I've one surprise to show you, Harry.  Wait
+until Johnson, the paymaster, gets in.  Then you'll see who else is with
+him."
+
+"Are you gentlemen ready for your horses?" asked a stable boy, coming
+around to the front of the hotel.
+
+"Yes," nodded Tom.
+
+Two tough, lean, wiry desert ponies were brought around.  Tom and Harry
+mounted, riding away at a slow trot at first.
+
+From an upper window Fred Ransom looked down upon them, then called Duff
+to his side.
+
+"There is your game, Duff," hinted the agent.
+
+"They'll be easy to a man of my experience," laughed the gambler.  "I've
+a clever scheme for starting trouble with them."
+
+He whispered a few words in his companion's ears, at which Ransom
+laughed with apparent enjoyment.
+
+"You're a keen one, Duff," grinned the agent from Chicago.
+
+"I've seen enough of life," boasted the gambler quietly, "to be able to
+judge most people at first sight.  You shall soon see whether I don't
+succeed in starting some hard feeling with Reade and Hazelton."
+
+The nearer edge of the treacherous Man-killer was something more than
+two miles west of the town of Paloma.  In the course of a quarter of an
+hour Tom and Harry drew rein near a portable wooden building that served
+as an office in the field.
+
+Mr. Hawkins, a solid-looking, bearded man of fifty, with snapping eyes
+that contrasted with his drawling speech, stepped from the building.
+
+"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!"
+
+"And the foremen?  You can depend upon them?"
+
+"On every one of them," declared Hawkins promptly.  "Even to the Mexican
+foreman, Mendoza.  He's a greaser, but he's a brick, and a white man all
+the way through!"
+
+"Call the foremen in, then--all except Payson, who is with his gang."
+
+Tom and Harry stepped inside the office.  Mr. Hawkins strolled away, but
+within ten minutes he was back again, followed by Foremen Bell, Rivers
+and Mendoza.
+
+"Two wagons have driven up, east of here," announced Mr. Hawkins, as he
+entered the office building.  "They've stopped a quarter of a mile below
+here and have dumped two tents.  I think they're about to raise them."
+
+Tom stepped hastily outside, glancing eastward, where they saw what the
+superintendent had described.  One of the tents had just been raised,
+though the pitching of it had not yet been thoroughly done.
+
+"What crowd is that?" Reade asked.  "Who is at the head of it?"
+
+"I see one man there--the only man in good clothes--who looks like Jim
+Duff," replied the superintendent, using his field glasses.
+
+"The gambler?" asked Tom sharply.
+
+"The same."
+
+"He's pitching his tent on the railroad's dirt, isn't he!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Come along.  We'll have a look at that place."
+
+A few minutes of brisk walking brought the young engineers, the
+superintendent and the three foremen to the spot.
+
+Tent number one had been pitched.  It was a circular tent, some forty
+feet in diameter.  The second tent, only a little smaller, was now being
+hoisted.
+
+"Who's in charge of this work?" asked Tom in his usual pleasant tone.
+
+"My manager, Mr. Bemis--Dock Bemis," answered Jim Duff suavely, as he
+moved forward to meet the party.  "Dock, come here.  I want you to know
+Mr. Reade, the engineer in charge of this job."
+
+Duff's manners were impudently easy and assured.  The fellow known as
+Dock Bemis, an unprepossessing, shabbily dressed man of thirty-five,
+with a mean face and an ugly-looking eye, came forward.
+
+"I'll take Mr. Bemis's acquaintance for granted," Tom continued, with an
+easy smile.  "You own this outfit, don't you, Mr. Duff?"
+
+"I've rented it, if you mean the tents, tables and chairs," assented the
+gambler.  "I've a stock of liquors coming over as soon as I send one of
+the wagons back."
+
+"What do you propose to do with all this?" Tom inquired.
+
+"Why, of course, you see," smiled Duff, with all the suavity in the
+world, "as your boys are going to be paid off this afternoon they'll
+want to go somewhere to enjoy themselves.  As the day is very hot I
+thought it would be showing good intentions if I brought an outfit over
+here.  I'll have everything ready within an hour."
+
+"So that you can get our men intoxicated and fleece them more easily?"
+asked Tom, with his best smile.  "Is that the idea?"
+
+Jim buff flushed angrily.  Then his face became pale.
+
+"It's a crude way you have of expressing it, Mr. Reade, if you Ill allow
+me to say so," the gambler answered, in a voice choked with anger.  "I
+am going to offer your men a little amusement.  It's what they need, and
+what they'll insist upon.  Do you see?  There's a small mob coming this
+way now."
+
+Tom turned, discovering about a hundred railroad laborers coming down
+the road.
+
+"Mr. Duff," asked the young chief engineer, "can you show any proof of
+your authority to erect tents on the railroad's land?"
+
+"What other place around here, Mr. Reade, would be as convenient?"
+demanded the gambler.
+
+"I repeat my question, sir!  Have you any authority or warrant for
+erecting tents here?"
+
+"Do you mean, have I a permit from the railroad company?"
+
+"You know very well what I mean, Duff."
+
+Though Reade's tone was somewhat sharper, his smile was as genial as
+ever.
+
+"I didn't imagine you'd have any objection to my coming here," the
+gambler replied evasively.
+
+"Have you any authority to be on the railroad's land's?" persisted Tom
+Reade.  "Yes or no?"
+
+"No-o-o-o, I haven't, unless I can persuade you to see how reasonable it
+is that your men should be provided with enjoyment right at their own
+camp."
+
+"Take the tents down, then, as quickly as you can accomplish it,"
+directed Tom, though in a quiet voice.
+
+"And--if I don't?" asked Duff, smiling dangerously and displaying his
+white, dog-like teeth.
+
+"Then I shall direct one of the foremen to call a sufficient force, Mr.
+Duff, to take down your tents and remove them from railroad property.  I
+am not seeking trouble with you, sir; I don't want trouble.  But, as
+long as I remain in charge here no gambling or drinking places are going
+to be opened on the railroad's land."
+
+"Mr. Reade," inquired the gambler, his smile fading, "do you object to
+giving me a word in private?"
+
+"Not at all," Tom declared.  "But it won't help your plans."
+
+"I'd like just a word with you alone," coaxed the gambler.
+
+Nodding, Reade stepped away with the gambler to a distance of a hundred
+feet or so from the rapidly increasing crowd.
+
+"I expect to make a little money out of this tent outfit, of course,"
+explained Jim Duff.
+
+"I expect that you won't make a dollar out of it--on railway property,"
+returned Reade steadily.
+
+"I'm going to make a little money--not much," Duff went on.  "Now, if I
+can make the whole deal with you, and if no one else is allowed to
+bother me, I can afford to pass you one hundred dollars a day for the
+tent privilege."
+
+Before even expectant Tom realized what was happening, Duff had pressed
+a wad of paper money into his hand.
+
+"What is this?" demanded Reade.
+
+"Don't let everyone see it," warned the gambler.  "You'll find two
+hundred dollars there, in bills.  That's for the first two days of our
+tent privilege here."
+
+"You contemptible hound!" exclaimed Tom angrily.
+
+Whish!  The tightly folded wad of bank notes left Tom's hand, landing
+squarely in Jim Duff Is face.
+
+In an instant the gambler's face turned white.  His hand flew back to a
+pocket in which he carried a pistol.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TOM MAKES A SPEECH ON GAMBLING
+
+
+"Cut out the gun-play!  That doesn't go here!" Tom uttered warningly.
+
+One swift step forward, and one hand caught Jim Duff by the throat.
+With the other hand Tom caught Duff's right wrist and wrenched away the
+pistol that instantly appeared in the gambler's hand.
+
+The weapon Tom threw on the ground, some feet away.  Then, with eyes
+blazing with contempt, Tom Reade struck the gambler heavily across the
+face with the flat of his hand.  Hard work had added to the young
+engineer's muscle of earlier days, and the gambler was staggered.
+
+Another instant, and Superintendent Hawkins who, with Hazelton and the
+foremen, had run up to them, seized Duff roughly from behind, holding
+his arms pinioned.
+
+Harry Hazelton picked up the revolver.  Quickly opening it, he drew out
+the cartridges.
+
+"Mr. Bell!" called Harry, and the foreman of that name hastened to him.
+
+"Take this thing back to the office and break it up with a hammer,"
+directed young Hazelton, as he passed the revolver to the foreman.  The
+latter sped away on his errand.
+
+"Let Duff go, Mr. Hawkins," directed Tom.  "I'm not afraid of him.
+Duff, I wish to apologize to you for striking you in the face.  I
+wouldn't allow any man to do that to me.  But your action in reaching
+for a pistol was so childish--or cowardly, whichever you prefer to call
+it--that I admit I forgot myself for a moment.  Now, you are not going
+to erect any tents for gambling or other unworthy purposes on the
+railroad's property.  It's bad business to let you do anything of the
+sort.  I trust that there will be no hard feeling between us."
+
+"Hard feeling?" hissed Jim Duff, his wicked-looking face paler than
+ever. "Boy, you needn't try to crawl back into my good graces after the
+way you acted toward me!"
+
+"I'm not trying to crawl into your esteem, or to get there by any other
+means," Tom answered quietly, though with a firmness that caused
+superintendent and foremen to feel a new respect for their young chief
+engineer.  "At the same time, Duff, I don't believe in stirring up bad
+blood with anyone.  You and I haven't the same way of regarding your
+line of business.  That's the main difficulty.  As I can't see your
+point of view, it would be hardly fair to expect you to understand my
+way of regarding what you wished to do here.  Your tents will have to
+come down and be moved, but I have no personal feeling in the matter.
+How soon can you get your tents down?"
+
+"They are not coming down, I tell you!" snarled the gambler.
+
+"That's where you and I fail once more to agree," replied Tom steadily,
+looking the other straight in the eyes.  "It's merely a question of
+whether you will take them down, or whether I shall set our own men to
+doing it."
+
+Jim Duff had brought with him about a dozen men of his own.  They were a
+somewhat picturesque-looking crowd, though not necessarily dangerous
+men. They were mostly men who had been hired to run the gaming tables
+under the canvas.  A judge of men would have immediately classified them
+as inferior specimens of manhood.
+
+So far these men had not offered to take any part in the dispute.  Now
+Duff moved over to them quickly, muttering the words:
+
+"Stand by me!"
+
+As for Tom Reade, he was backed by five men, including his chum.  Though
+none of Reade's force was armed, the young engineer knew that he could
+depend upon them.
+
+Followed by his adherents, Duff took a few quick strides forward.  This
+brought him face to face with Reade's labors, of whom now more than two
+hundred were present.
+
+"Are you men or squaws?" called, Duff loudly.  "I have brought the stuff
+over here for a merry night of it.  This boy says you can't have your
+enjoyment.  Are you going to let him rule you in that fashion, or are
+you going to throw him out of here?"
+
+There came from the crowd a gradually increasing murmur of rage.
+
+"Throw this boy out, if you're men!" Duff jeered.  "Throw him out, I
+say, and send word to your railroad people to put a man here in his
+place."
+
+The murmurs increased, especially from the Mexicans, for the Mexican
+peon, or laborer, is often a furious gambler who will stake even the
+shirt on his back.
+
+Foreman Mendoza, who understood his own people, started forward, but
+Tom, with a signal, caused him to halt.
+
+"Throw him out, I say!" yelled Duff shrilly.  "Duff, I'm afraid you're
+making a fool of yourself," remarked Tom, stepping forward, smiling
+cheerfully.
+
+Yet another murmur, now growing to a yell, rose from some of the men--a
+few of the men, too, who were not Mexicans, and a half-hearted rush was
+made in the young engineer's direction.
+
+"Throw him out!  Hustle the boy out!" Duff urged.
+
+"Stop!  Stop right in your tracks!" thundered Tom Reade, taking still
+another step toward the now angrier crowd.  "Men, listen to me, and
+you'll get a proper understanding of this affair.  Jim Duff wants me
+thrown out of here--"
+
+"Yes!  And out you'll go!" roared a voice from the rear of the crowd.
+
+"That's a question that the next few minutes will settle," Tom rejoined,
+with a smile.  "If Jim Duff wants me thrown out of here, why don't you
+men tell him to do it himself?"
+
+The force of this suggestion, with the memory of what they had recently
+seen, struck home with many of the men.  A shout of laughter went up,
+followed by yells of:
+
+"That's right--dead right!"
+
+"Sail in, Jim!"
+
+"Throw him out, Jim! We'll see fair play!"
+
+Tom made an ironical bow in the direction of the gambler.
+
+"Have you men gone crazy!" yelled Jim Duff hoarsely.
+
+"Have you lost your nerve, Jim?" bawled a lusty American laborer.  "You
+want this boy, as you call him, thrown out, and we're waiting to see you
+do it.  It you haven't the nerve to tackle the job, then you're not a
+man to give us orders!"
+
+Tom's smiling good humor and his fair proposition had swung the balance
+of feeling against the gambler.  Duff saw that he had lost ground.
+
+"Boy," called a few voices, "if Duff won't throw you out, then you turn
+the tables and throw him out."
+
+"It isn't necessary," laughed Tom.  "After the tents are gone Duff won't
+have any desire to remain around here.  Mr. Duff, I ask you for the last
+time, will you have your men take down the tents and remove them?"
+
+"I won't!" snarled the gambler.
+
+"Mr. Rivers!" called Tom.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the foreman, stepping forward.
+
+"Mr. Rivers, take twenty-five laborers and bring the tents down at once.
+Be careful to see that no damage is done.  As soon as they are down you
+will load them on the wagons."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"On second thought, you had better take fifty men.  See that the work is
+done as promptly as possible."
+
+The Mexicans, who were in the majority, and nearly all of whom were
+wildly eager to gamble as soon as their money arrived, stirred uneasily.
+They might have interfered, but Foreman Mendoza ran among his
+countrymen, calling out to them vigorously in Spanish, and with so much
+emphasis that the men sullenly withdrew.
+
+Foreman Rivers speedily had his fifty men, together, none of whom were
+Mexicans.
+
+"Touch a single guy-rope at your peril!" warned Jim Duff menacingly, but
+big Superintendent Hawkins seized the gambler by the shoulders, gently,
+though, firmly, removing him from the vicinity of the tents.
+
+All in a flash the work was done.  Canvas and poles were loaded on to
+the wagons.  Mr. Rivers's men had entered so thoroughly into the spirit
+of the thing that, they forced the drivers to start off, and the
+gambler's men to follow.
+
+Goaded to the last ditch of desperation, Jim Duff now strode over to
+where Tom stood.  No one opposed him, nor did Reade's smile fail.
+
+"Boy, you've had your laugh, just now," announced the gambler, in his
+most threatening, tone.  "It will be your last laugh."
+
+"Oh, I hope not," drawled Tom.
+
+"You will know more within twenty-four hours.  You have treated me, with
+your own crowd about you, like a dog."
+
+"You're wrong again," laughed Tom..  "Jim is fond of dogs.  They are
+fine fellows."
+
+"You may laugh as much as you want, just now," jeered Jim Duff.  "You've
+made an enemy, and one of the worst in Arizona!  I won't waste any more
+talk on you--except to warn you."
+
+"Warn me?  About what?" asked Tom curiously.
+
+Instead of answering, Jim Duff turned on his heel, stalking off with a
+majesty that, somehow, looked sadly damaged.
+
+"He has warned you," murmured Superintendent Hawkins in an undertone.
+"That is your hint that Duff will fight you to the death at the first
+opportunity."
+
+"May it be long in coming!" uttered Tom devoutly.
+
+Then, as he turned about and saw scores of laborers coming in his
+direction, Reade remembered what he wished to do.
+
+"Mr. Hawkins," he continued, turning toward the superintendent, "I see
+that Mr. Payson's gang is coming in from work.  As all our men are now
+idle, I wish you would direct the foremen to see that all hands assemble
+here.  I have something to say to them."
+
+Within ten minutes the five hundred laborers and mechanics had been
+gathered in a compact crowd.  Now that the excitement of hustling the
+gambler off the scene had died away, many of the men were sorry that
+they had not made their disapproval plainer.  Though Tom Reade plainly
+understood the mood of the men, he mounted a barrel, holding up both
+hands as a sign for silence.
+
+"Now, men," he began, "you all know that the pay train is due here this
+afternoon.  You are all eager to get your money--for what?  It is a
+strange fact that gold is the carrion that draws all of the vultures.  A
+few minutes ago you saw one of the vultures here, preparing to get his
+supposed share of your money away from you.  Does Jim Duff care a hang
+about any of you?  Do any of you care anything whatever for Jim Duff?
+Then why should you be so eager to get into one of his tents and let him
+take your money away from you?
+
+"It is true that, once in a while, a solitary player gets a few dollars
+away from a gambler.  Yet, in the end, the gambler has every dollar of
+the crowd that patronizes him.  You men have been out in the hot sun for
+weeks, working hard to earn the money that the pay train is bringing
+you.  Has Jim Duff done any work in the last few weeks?  While you men
+have been toiling and sweating, what has Duff been doing?  Hasn't he
+been going around wearing the clothes and the air of a gentleman, while
+you men have been giving all but your lives for your dollars, while you
+have been denied most of the comforts of living.  Hasn't Duff been up at
+the Mansion House, living on the fat of the land and smiling to himself
+every time he thought of you men, who would be ready to hand him all of
+your money as soon as it came to you?  Is the gambler, who grows fat on
+the toil of others, but never toils himself, any better than the vulture
+that feeds upon the animals killed by others?  Isn't the gambler a
+parasite, pure and simple? On whose lifeblood does the gambler feed,
+unless it's on yours?"
+
+Tom continued his harangue, becoming more and more intense, yet carrying
+his talk along in all simplicity, and with a directness that made scores
+of the workmen look sheepish.
+
+"Whenever you find a man anywhere who professes to be working for your
+good, or for your amusement, and who gets all the benefit in the end,
+why don't you open your eyes to him?" Tom inquired presently.  "Over in
+Paloma there are saloon keepers who are cleaning up their dives and
+opening new lots of liquor that they feel sure they're going to sell you
+to-night. These dive keepers are ready to welcome you with open arms,
+and they'll try to make you feel that you're royal good fellows and that
+they are the best friends you have in the world.  Yet, to-morrow
+morning, how will the property be divided?  The keepers of these saloons
+and Jim Duff will have all your money and what will you have?"
+
+Tom paused, whipping out a white handkerchief that he deftly bound
+around his head, meanwhile looking miserable.
+
+"That's what you men will have--and that's all that you'll have left,"
+croaked the young chief engineer dismally.  "Now, friends, is the game
+worth a candle of that sort?  How many of you have money in the bank?
+Let every man here who has put up his hand.  Not one of you?  Who's
+keeping your money in bank for you?  Jim Duff and the sellers of
+poisons?  Will they ever hand your money back to you?  Some of you men
+have dear ones at home.  If one of these dear ones sends a hurried,
+frenzied appeal for money in time of sickness or death what will your
+answer have to be?  Just this: 'I have been working like a slave for a
+year, but I can send you only my love.  Jim Duff, who hasn't worked in
+all his life, won't let me send you any money.'  Friends, is that what
+you're burning yourselves black on the desert for?"
+
+While Tom Reade spoke Foreman Mendoza had marshaled his Mexicans and was
+translating the young engineer's words into Spanish.
+
+Nor was it long ere Tom's fine presentation of the matter caught the men
+in the nobler part of their feelings.
+
+"Don't blame Duff so much," Tom finally went on.  "He may be a parasite,
+a vulture, a feeder on blood, but you and men just like you have helped
+to make the Duffs.  You're not going to do so after this, are you, my
+friends? You're not going to keep the breath of life in monsters who
+drain you dry of life and manhood?"
+
+"No!" came a thunderous shout, even though all of Reade's hearers did
+not join in it.
+
+Even the Mexicans, listening to Mendoza's translation, became
+interested, despite their lesser degree of intelligence.
+
+Tom continued to talk against time, though he wasted few words.  All
+that he said went home to many of the laborers.  While he was still
+talking the whistle of the pay train was heard.
+
+Reade quickly sent his foremen and a few trusted workmen to head off any
+"runners" who might attempt to come in from Paloma while the men were
+being paid off.
+
+As the train came to a stop Tom leaped upon a flat car behind the engine
+and introduced one of the newcomers--the vice president of a savings
+bank over in Tucson.  This man, who knew the common people, talked for
+fifteen minutes, after which a clerk appeared from the pay car with a
+book in which to register the signatures of those who wished to open
+bank accounts.  Then the paymaster and his assistants worked rapidly in
+paying off.
+
+That railroad pay day proved a time of gloom to many in the town of
+Paloma. The returning pay train carried the bank officials and twenty-
+four thousand dollars that had been deposited as new accounts from the
+men.  Of the money that remained in camp much of it was carried in the
+pockets of men who meant to keep it there until they received something
+worth while it exchange.
+
+True, this did not trouble the majority of people in Paloma, who were
+sober, decent American citizens engaged in the proper walks of life.
+
+But Jim Duff and a few others held an indignation meeting that night.
+
+"We've been robbed!" complained one indignant saloon keeper.
+
+"Gentlemen," observed Jim Duff, in his oiliest tones, though his face
+was ghastly white, "you have a new enemy, who threatens your success in
+business.  How are you going to deal with him?"
+
+"We'll run him off the desert, or bury him there!" came the snarling
+response.
+
+"I can't believe that boy, Reade, will ever succeed in laying the
+railroad tracks across the Man-killer," smiled Jim Duff darkly within
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOMEBODY STIRS THE MUD
+
+
+The next morning only a few of the men, some of those who had refused to
+open bank accounts, failed to show up at the railroad camp.
+
+"There is really nothing to do this morning," Tom remarked to
+Superintendent Hawkins.  "However, I think you had better dock the
+missing men for time off.  If you find that any missing man has been
+gone on a proper errand of rest or enjoyment, and has not been making a
+beast of himself, you can restore his docked pay on the lists."
+
+"That's a very good idea," nodded Hawkins.  "It always angers me to see
+these poor, hardworking fellows go away and make fools of themselves
+just as soon as they get a bit of pay in their pockets.  Still, you
+can't change the whole face of human nature, Mr. Reade."
+
+"I don't expect to do so," smiled Tom.  "Yet, if we can get a hundred or
+two in this outfit to take a sensible view of pay day, and can drill it
+into them so that it will stick, there will be just that number of
+happier men in the world.  How long have you been in this work on the
+frontier, Mr. Hawkins?"
+
+"About twenty years, sir."
+
+"Then it must have angered you, many a time, to see the vultures and the
+parasites fattening on the men who do the real work in life."
+
+"It has," nodded the superintendent.  "However, I haven't your gift with
+the tongue, Mr. Reade, and I've never been able to lead men into the
+right path as you did yesterday."
+
+Over in the little village of tents where the idle workmen sat through
+the forenoon there was some restlessness.  These men knew that there was
+nothing for them to do until the construction material arrived, and that
+they were required only to report in order to keep themselves on the
+time sheets.  Having reported to their foremen and the checkers, they
+were quite at liberty to go over into Paloma or elsewhere.  A few of
+them had gone. Some others had an uneasy feeling that they wouldn't like
+to face the contempt in the eyes of the young chief engineer if he
+happened to see them going away from camp.
+
+"It's none of the business of that chap Reade," growled one of the
+workmen.
+
+"Of course it isn't," spoke up another.  "He talked to us straight
+yesterday, however, and showed us that it was our own business to keep
+out of the tough places in Paloma.  I've worked under these engineers
+for years, and I never before knew one of them to care whether I had a
+hundred dollars or an empty stomach.  Boys, I tell you, Reade, has the
+right stuff in him, if he is only a youngster.  He knows the enemies he
+has made over in Paloma, and he understands the risks be has been taking
+in making such enemies.  He proved to us that he can stand that sort of
+thing and be our friend.  Look at this thing, will you?"
+
+With something of a look of wonder the speaker drew out the bankbook
+that he had acquired the afternoon before.
+
+"I've got forty dollars in bank," he continued, in something of a tone
+of awe.  "Forty friends of mine that I've put away to work and do good
+things for me!  If I don't touch this money for some years then I'll
+find that this money has grown to be a lot more than forty dollars!"
+
+"Or else you'll find that some bank clerk is up in Canada spending it,"
+jeered a companion.
+
+"I don't care what the clerk does.  The bank will be still good for the
+money.  Joe, you read the papers as often as any come into camp."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All right.  The next time you find anything about a savings bank that
+has failed and left the people in the lurch for their money, you show it
+to me. Savings banks don't fail nowadays!  No, Sir!"
+
+Other men through the camp were taking sly peeps at their bankbooks, as
+though they were half ashamed at having such possessions.  Yet many a
+hard toiler in camp felt a new sense of importance that morning.  He
+began to look upon himself as a part of the moneyed world as, indeed, he
+was!
+
+"Telegram for Mr. Reade," called one of the two camp operators, coming
+forward.
+
+Tom tore the envelope open, then stared at the following message:
+
+"Reade, Chief Engineer.
+
+"Have complaint from merchants of Paloma that you have effectually
+stopped the men from spending any money in the town.  Not our policy to
+make enemies of the towns along our line.  Explain immediately.
+
+"(Signed)  ELLSWORTH,
+
+"General Manager."
+
+"Hmmm!" smiled Tom, then passed the message over to Superintendent
+Hawkins.
+
+"Your newly made enemies have gotten after you quickly, Sir," commented
+the superintendent grimly.
+
+"Yes," nodded Tom.  "And, of course, I can't follow any course that
+isn't approved by the general manager.  I'll wire him the truth and see
+what he has to say.  Operator!"
+
+"Yes, Sir," replied the young man, turning and coming back.
+
+"Wait for a message," directed Tom; then seated himself and wrote the
+following reply:
+
+"Ellsworth, General Manager.
+
+"Have not interfered in any way with honest merchants of Paloma.  Men
+are at liberty to spend their money any way they choose.  I did give the
+men a talk about the foolishness of spending their wages in buying
+liquor or in gambling.  Result was that men banked about two thirds of
+the total pay roll with the bank people you sent on pay train yesterday
+at my request. Also drove off a gambler who tried to erect two tents on
+railroad property in order to fleece the men more speedily.
+
+"(Signed) READE,
+
+"Chief Engineer."
+
+"That will tell the general manager about the kind of merchants that
+I've been injuring," smiled Tom, first showing the sheet to
+Superintendent Hawkins and then handing it to the waiting messenger.
+
+"I hope Ellsworth, will be satisfied," nodded Hawkins.  "Good will is an
+asset for a railway, and your enemies in Paloma may be able to stir up a
+good deal of trouble for you.  Mr. Reade, I stood with you yesterday,
+and I'm still with you.  If Ellsworth is so cranky that you feel like
+throwing the job here, then I'll walk out with you."
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to give up the work here," predicted Reade
+cheerfully. "I'm too much interested in it.  Neither am I going to have
+my hands tied by any clique of gamblers and dive keepers.  If Mr.
+Ellsworth isn't satisfied, then I'll run up to headquarters and talk to
+him in person.  I'm not going to quit; neither am I going to be
+prevented from winning and deserving the friendship of the men who are
+here working for us."
+
+"Telegram for Mr. Reade," grinned the operator, again looking in at the
+doorway.
+
+After reading it, Tom passed over to Hawkins this message from General
+Manager Ellsworth:
+
+"Unable to judge merits of case at this distance.  Will be with you
+soon."
+
+"That's all right," Reade declared.
+
+"It looks all right," muttered Hawkins, who knew something about the
+ways of railroads.
+
+Up the track the whistle on a stationary engine blew the noon signal.
+
+"Feel like eating, Harry?" Tom called to his chum, who had been mildly
+dozing in a chair in one corner of the room.
+
+"Always," declared Hazelton, sitting up and yawning.
+
+"Are you going to eat in town this noon, or in camp?" Tom inquired of
+the superintendent of construction.
+
+Hawkins was about to answer that he'd eat in camp, when he suddenly
+reconsidered.
+
+"I guess I'll ride along with you, Mr. Reade," he said dryly.
+
+Horses were brought, and the three mounted and rode away.  In such
+sizzling heat as beat down from the noonday sun Tom had not the heart to
+urge his mount to speed.  The trio were soon at the edge of Paloma,
+which they had to enter through one of the streets occupied by the
+rougher characters.
+
+Just as they rode down by the first buildings a low whistle sounded on
+the heavy, dead air.
+
+"Signal that the locomotive is headed this way," announced Hawkins
+grimly. "Look out for the crossing, Mr. Reade!"
+
+Hardly had the superintendent finished speaking when a sharp hiss
+sounded from an open window.  Then another and more hisses, from
+different buildings.
+
+"A few snakes left in the grass," Tom remarked jokingly.
+
+"Oh, you've stirred up a nest of 'em, Mr. Reade," rejoined the
+superintendent.
+
+Tom laughed as Harry added:
+
+"Let's hope that there are no poisonous reptiles among them.  It would
+be rough on poisonous snakes to have Tom find them."
+
+Then the three horsemen turned the corner near the Mansion House.
+Superintendent Hawkins looked grave as he noted a crowd before the
+hotel.
+
+"Mr. Reade, I believe those men are there waiting to see you.  I'm
+certain they've not gathered just to talk about the weather."
+
+There was a movement in the crowd, and a suppressed, surly murmur, as
+the engineer party was sighted.
+
+Tom Reade, however, rode forward at the head of his party, alighting
+close to the crowd, which numbered fifty or sixty men.  The young chief
+engineer signed to one of the stable boys, who came forward, half
+reluctantly, and took the bridles of the three horses to lead them away.
+
+Jim Duff, backed by three other men, stepped forward.  There was a world
+of menace in the gambler's wicked eyes as he began, in a soft, almost
+purring tone:
+
+"Mr. Reade," announced Jim Duff, "we are a committee, appointed by
+citizens, to express our belief that the air of Paloma is not going to
+be good for you.  At the same time we wish to ask you concerning your
+plans for leaving the town."
+
+There could be no question as to the meaning of the speaker.  Tom Reade
+was being ordered out of town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TOM HAS NO PLANS FOR LEAVING TOWN
+
+
+"My plans for leaving town?" repeated Tom pleasantly.  "Why, gentlemen,
+I'll meet your question frankly by saying that I haven't made any such
+plans."
+
+"You're going to do so, aren't?" inquired Duff casually.
+
+"By the time that my partner and I have finished our work for the road,
+Mr. Duff, I imagine that we shall be making definite plans to go away,
+unless the railroad officials decide to keep us here with Paloma as
+headquarters for other work."
+
+"We believe that it would be much better for your health if you went
+away at once," Duff insisted, with a mildness that did not disguise his
+meaning in the least.
+
+Tom deemed it not worth while to pretend any longer that he did not
+understand.
+
+"Oh, then it's a case of 'Here's your hat. What's your hurry?'" asked
+Reade smilingly.
+
+"Something in that line," assented Jim Duff.  "I venture to assure you
+that we are quite in earnest in our anxiety for your welfare, Mr.
+Reade."
+
+"Whom do you men represent?" asked Tom.
+
+"The citizens of Paloma," returned Duff.
+
+"All of them?" Reade insisted.
+
+"All of them--with few exceptions."
+
+"I understand you, of course," Tom nodded.
+
+"Now, Mr. Duff, I'll tell you what I propose.  I'm curious to know just
+how many there are on your side of the fence.  Pardon me, but I really
+can't quite believe that the better citizens of this town are behind
+you. I know too many Arizona men, and I have too good an opinion of
+them.  Your kind of crowd makes a lot of noise at times, and the other
+kind of Arizona crowd rarely makes any noise.  I know, of course, the
+element in the town that your committee represents, but I don't believe
+that your element is by any means in the majority here."
+
+"I assure you that we represent the sentiment of the town," Duff
+retorted steadily.
+
+"Much as I regret the necessity for seeming to slight your opinion," Tom
+went on with as pleasant a smile as at first,  "I call for a showing of
+hands or a count of noses.  I'll tell you what we'll do, Mr. Duff, if it
+meets with your approval.  We'll hire a hall, sharing the expense.
+We'll state the question fairly in the local newspaper, and we'll invite
+all good citizens to turn out, meet in the hall, hear the case on both
+sides, and then decide for themselves whether they want the railroad
+engineers to leave the town or--"
+
+"They do want you to leave town!" the gambler insisted.
+
+"Or whether they want Jim Duff and some of his friends to leave town,"
+Tom Reade continued good-humoredly.
+
+Jim Duff turned, gazing back at the men with him.  They represented the
+roughest element in the town.
+
+"No use arguing with a mule, Jim!" growled a red-faced man at the rear
+of the crowd.  "Get a rail, boys, and we'll start the procession right
+now."
+
+"Bring a rope along, too!" called another man hoarsely.
+
+"Get two rails and one rope!" proposed a third bad character.  "The
+other kid doesn't seem to be sassy enough to need a rope."
+
+"Gentlemen," broke in Harry Hazelton gravely, "if anyone of you imagines
+that I'm holding my tongue because I disapprove of my partner's course,
+let me assure you that I back every word he says."
+
+"Make it two ropes, then!" jeered another voice.
+
+"Reade," continued Jim Duff, "we all try to be decent men here, and the
+friends with me are a good and sensible lot of men.  You have carried
+matters just a little too far.  Think over what you've heard and noticed
+here, and then tell me again about your plans, for quitting Paloma."
+
+As he spoke Jim made a gesture that kept some of the men near him from
+rushing forward.  Tom did not appear to notice the demonstration at all.
+Certainly he did not flinch.
+
+"I haven't any such plans," Tom laughed.  "I'm hungry and I'm going
+inside to eat."
+
+With that, he turned his back on the crowd, with Harry behind him, both
+making for the steps of the hotel.  Superintendent Hawkins stepped in
+after the boys.
+
+"Gentlemen, I can't do anything more," spoke up Jim Duff, with an air of
+resignation.
+
+"But we can!" roared some of the roughs in the crowd.  A dozen of them
+surged forward.  The first of them swung a lariat to slip it over Tom
+Reade's neck.
+
+Bump! Hawkins's sledge-hammer right hand shot out, landing on that
+fellow's face.  With a moan the fellow collapsed on the sidewalk, his
+jaw broken.
+
+Then Tom and Harry wheeled like a flash, eyeing the idlers and roughs
+sternly.
+
+"Don't go any further," proposed Tom, his eyes growing steely, "unless
+you mean it."
+
+Something in the attitude of the trio of athletic figures standing ready
+before them disquieted the crowd of roughs.  There were armed men in
+that crowd, but all felt that they had been put in the wrong, so far,
+and none of them dared draw the first weapon or fire the first shot.
+
+"Take that injured man to a surgeon and have his jaw set," spoke Tom
+quietly.  "Let the surgeon send me the bill.  I'm sorry for the fellow,
+for I'm indirectly the cause of his being hurt.  The main cause of his
+misfortune was due to his being in bad company."
+
+"Come out of that hotel," ordered Jim Duff, his eyes blazing as he
+stepped forward, though with Hawkins's cold, hard eyes on him the
+gambler was careful to keep his hands at his sides.  "You can't get
+anything to eat in there!"
+
+"Do you own the hotel?" Tom inquired coolly.
+
+"No; but you can't eat there."
+
+"Join us at lunch, Mr. Hawkins!" Tom invited, turning away from the
+gambler.  The superintendent nodded, for he had no intention of leaving
+the young engineers for the present.
+
+All three entered the hotel, while the small mob outside hooted and
+jeered. Tom led the way to a table in the dining room, signing to one of
+the waiters.
+
+Hardly had the waiter reached them when Jim Duff and the proprietor of
+the Mansion House came in.  Jim, after saying a few words in a low tone,
+halted, while the proprietor came forward.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Ashby," nodded Tom, when he saw the proprietor headed
+their way.  The latter looked rather embarrassed, but he moved a hand to
+signal the waiter to withdraw.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Reade, but I can't have you any longer at this hotel,"
+began Ashby.
+
+"Any particular reason?" Tom inquired, looking the man straight in the
+eye.
+
+"Yes; some of my other guests object to your presence here."
+
+"Meaning Jim Duff?" questioned Reade coolly.
+
+"I don't care to discuss the matter with you, Mr. Reade, but I can't
+entertain you here any longer."
+
+"Does that apply even to this meal, Mr. Ashby?"
+
+"It does."
+
+"Very good," nodded Tom, rising.  Harry and Hawkins shoved their chairs
+back, too, and stood up.
+
+"Say, but I don't like the looks of that!" announced a voice from
+another table.  There were five men seated there, all of them well-
+dressed and prosperous-looking traveling salesmen, who had arrived that
+morning.
+
+"This is a very regrettable necessity on my part, gentlemen," began
+Proprietor Ashby hurriedly, and plainly ill at ease.  "Some of my
+regular guests object to the presence of these young men, and so--"
+
+"These young gentlemen have gotten in bad by objecting to having their
+men fleeced here in town, haven't they?" inquired the boldest of the
+drummers. "I heard something about it this morning."
+
+"Perhaps you haven't heard all the circumstances," suggested Ashby in
+growing embarrassment.
+
+"We've heard enough, anyway," replied the same drummer briskly.  "So
+these young men, who are a credit to their profession and to their home
+towns, are ordered to leave here?  Boys, I guess we leave, too, don't
+we?"
+
+The other traveling salesmen assented emphatically.
+
+Now Proprietor Ashby felt dismal, indeed.  These five men were occupying
+the best quarters in his hotel, outside of those occupied by Jim Duff.
+It was not the loss of patronage from these men alone that troubled
+Ashby. Traveling salesmen have their own ways of "passing around the
+word" and downing any hotel that depends largely on their patronage.
+
+"You can have all our rooms, then, Mr. Ashby," proposed the same
+drummer. "We'll have our things out and be ready for our bills within
+twenty minutes."
+
+"But, gentlemen, be calm about this," begged Ashby.  "Finish your meals
+first.  There may be some way of arranging--"
+
+"There is," returned the drummer, with a smile that was a fine duplicate
+of Tom's own.  "We know just where to arrange for the kind of
+accommodations that we want.  Mr. Reade," turning to Tom and Harry,
+"will you allow me to introduce ourselves.  We are aching to shake hands
+with you, for we've heard all about you."
+
+Proprietor Ashby fidgeted at the side, while the eight departing guests
+paused long enough to make their names known to each other.
+
+Jim Duff had vanished early, leaving the hotel man to his own
+humiliation.
+
+The introductions concluded, Hawkins followed the young engineers to
+their room while the drummers went to their own more costly quarters and
+hastily packed their belongings.
+
+Fifteen minutes later the party stood in the office and porters were
+bringing down trunks.  Tom and Harry, keeping most of their belongings
+at camp, had only suit cases to carry.
+
+"Gentlemen, I think you are making a mistake," began Mr. Ashby, as he
+met the salesmen in the lobby near the clerk's desk.
+
+"We made a mistake in coming here," retorted the leader of the salesmen,
+pleasantly as to tone, "but we're rectifying it now.  Are our bills
+ready?"
+
+The proprietor went behind the desk to make change, while the clerk
+receipted seven bills.  Ashby's hands shook as he manipulated the money.
+
+"Dobson," he said, in a low tone to one of the drummers, "I had intended
+ordering a ton of hams from you.  Now, of course, I can't--"
+
+"Quite right," nodded Mr. Dobson cheerfully.  "You couldn't get them
+from our house at four times the market price.  We wouldn't want our
+brand served here."
+
+The last bill was paid.  Proprietor Ashby stiffened, his backbone,
+trying to look game.
+
+"Gentlemen," he inquired, "where are you going from here?  Won't you let
+me call the 'bus to take you?"
+
+"Never mind the, 'bus, Ash," smilingly replied the leader of the
+drummers, a man named Pritchard.  "If you'll send the 'bus over to the
+Cactus House with our trunks we'll be greatly obliged."
+
+"Certainly, gentlemen, it's a pleasure to oblige you," murmured Ashby,
+with a ghastly effort to look pleasant.  He watched the eight men step
+outside. Duff and his crowd had vanished.  It would never do to try any
+mob tricks on so many strangers who had done nothing.  The most easy-
+going citizens of an Arizona town would turn out to punish such a mob.
+
+The three railroad men had their horses brought around, but they rode
+slowly, chatting with the salesmen on the sidewalk.
+
+In this order they reached the Cactus House, which, thirty years ago,
+had been famous in and around the old Paloma of the frontier days.  The
+proprietor, a young man named Carter, had succeeded his father in the
+ownership of the property.  It was a neat hotel, but a small one.  The
+elder Carter had lost a good deal of money before his death, and the son
+was now trying to build up the property with hardly any reserve capital.
+
+At the Cactus there was a great flurry when five such important guests
+arrived and the young railroad engineers were also most heartily
+welcomed.
+
+"Our meal time is nearly over, but I'll have something special cooked
+for you right away, gentlemen," cried young Carter, bustling about, his
+eyes aglow.
+
+"Before you get that meal ready," said Pritchard, drawing young Carter
+aside, "I want to ask you whether any man can ever be driven from this
+hotel, just for being decent?"
+
+"He certainly cannot," replied Proprietor Carter with emphasis.
+
+"Live up to that, son," advised the drummer, "and I half suspect that
+you'll prosper."
+
+The meal finished, the three men from the railroad camp took leave of
+their new salesmen friends, mounted and rode back to camp.
+
+"The snakes are not all dead yet," mused Tom quizzically, as, in riding
+through the "tough" street again they heard hisses from open windows at
+which no heads appeared.
+
+"There's a letter here for you, Mr. Reade," announced Foreman Payson,
+who was sitting alone in the office.
+
+"Who brought it?"
+
+"I don't know his name.  Never saw him before.  He rode out here on
+horseback."
+
+The envelope, though a good one as to quality, was dirty on the outside.
+Tom Reade hastily broke the seal and read:
+
+"If you don't get away from Paloma pretty soon your presence will hold
+the railroad up for a longtime to come!  Get out, if you're wise, or the
+railroad will suffer with you!"
+
+"I reckon the fellow who wrote that was sincere enough," said Tom, as he
+passed the letter over to his chum.  "However, I don't like to feel that
+I can be seared by any man who's too cowardly to sign his name to a
+letter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GENERAL MANAGER "LOOKS IN"
+
+
+Neither Tom nor Harry was stupid enough to be wholly unafraid over the
+threats of the day.  Both realized that Jim Duff and the latter's
+associates were ugly and treacherous men who would fight sooner than be
+deprived of their chance to fleece the railway workmen.  Yet neither
+young engineer had any intention of being scared into flight.
+
+"They'll put up a lot of trouble for us," said Tom that afternoon, as
+the two chums talked the matter over.  "They may even go to extremities,
+and--"
+
+"Shoot us?" smiled Hazelton, though there was a serious look under his
+smile.
+
+"Yes; they may even try that," I nodded Tom.  "Though they won't make an
+open attempt.  They may try to get us from ambush at night.  They will
+be desperate, though not over brave.  Recollect, Harry, that the better
+element in Paloma won't stand much nonsense.  There are no braver men in
+the world than are found right in Arizona, and no men more decent."
+
+"Barring Duff and his gang," laughed Hazelton.
+
+"They're not real Arizona men.  They're the kind of human vultures who
+flock after large pay rolls in any place where men work without having
+their families in near-by homes.  If Duff had enough men of his own way
+of thinking, they might try to ride out here to camp and clean us out.
+If they did, then all the decent men in this part of Arizona would take
+to the saddle and drive Duff and his crew into hiding.  After what
+happened to-day you won't find Duff daring to do anything too open."
+
+"Excuse me, Sir, but there's a train coming," reported Foreman Rivers,
+thrusting his head in at the doorway of the little office building.
+
+"Not a construction train?" Reade asked.
+
+"Can't make it out yet, sir.  The whistle was reported a minute ago."
+
+Tom and Harry, chafing a good deal under their enforced idleness while
+waiting for materials, hastened outdoors.  Soon the train was close
+enough to be made out.   It consisted of an engine, baggage car and one
+private car.
+
+"It's one or more of the road's officials," murmured Harry.
+
+"I hope it's Mr. Ellsworth," replied Reade, as the chums walked briskly
+down to the spot where the train would have to halt.
+
+It turned out to be the general manager, a big and capable-looking man
+of fifty, with a belt-line just a trifle too large for comfort, who
+swung himself to the ground the instant that the train stopped.
+
+"I'm glad you're here, Reade," nodded the general manager, as he caught
+sight of his two young engineers.  "Come back into my car.  We can talk
+better there."
+
+Tom and Harry mounted to the platform of the car, following Mr.
+Ellsworth down the carpeted aisle of a very comfortable private Pullman
+car.  The general manager pointed to seats, threw himself into another,
+and then said:
+
+"Now, tell me all about the row that you've started with the town."
+
+Harry's lips closed tightly, but Tom launched at once into a plain,
+truthful account of the affair, bringing it down to the noonday meal of
+the present day.
+
+"It's not clear to me just why you should feel called upon to interfere
+so forcefully," said the general manager, a little fretfully.  "The
+workmen are all twenty-one years of age and upwards.  Couldn't they
+protect themselves if they wanted protection?"
+
+"Yes, sir, certainly," Tom admitted.  "However, letting that fellow Duff
+put up his tents right on the railroad property would almost make it
+look as though the road shared, or at least approved, his enterprise."
+
+"Oh, doubtless you were right to order the fellow off the railroad
+property," assented Mr. Ellsworth.  "But why did you go to such trouble
+to get the men to start new bank accounts and thus send most of their
+money out of town?"
+
+"May I answer that question, sir, by asking another?" asked Reade
+respectfully.  "Did you wish the men to spend it in Paloma?"
+
+"I don't care a hang what they do with it," retorted the general manager
+half peevishly.  "It's their own money."
+
+"It was you, Mr. Ellsworth, whom I wired yesterday morning, asking that
+you send down a representative of a savings bank who could open accounts
+with such of the men as desired."
+
+"Yes, and I sent you a couple of bank men.  I didn't have any idea,
+however, that you'd get the whole town of Paloma by the ears."
+
+"I haven't, sir.  I assure you of that.  I've hurt only a few parasites
+--a flock of human vultures.  The decent people of the town don't side
+with them."
+
+"I wish I could be sure that we haven't offended the town as a whole,"
+mused Mr. Ellsworth,  "The good will of the people along our line is a
+great asset."
+
+"You're acquainted with a lot of the real people in Paloma, aren't you,
+Mr. Ellsworth?"
+
+"With some of them, yes."
+
+"Then, while you're here, sir, I'd be glad if you'd look up some of
+these acquaintances in town and find out for yourself just how the
+sentiment stands.  We don't wish you to feel that we're a pair of
+trouble-makers who are doing our best to ruin the road with its future
+customers."
+
+"I believe I will go into town," mused Mr. Ellsworth.  "Is there an
+automobile anywhere about here?"
+
+"No, sir; but our telegraph operator can wire into town for one.  It
+will take but a few minutes to have a car here."
+
+"Send for it, then."
+
+"Would you like to see Mr. Hawkins while you're waiting, sir?" Tom
+suggested, rising.  "You know Hawkins, and probably you'll be satisfied
+with his judgment."
+
+"Send Hawkins along."
+
+"Yes, sir; and we won't return for the present, unless you send for us,"
+Reade replied, going toward the forward end of the car.
+
+Superintendent Hawkins was closeted with the general manager until the
+arrival of the automobile.  There was a frown on Mr. Ellsworth's face as
+they started townward.
+
+"Well," asked Harry Hazelton, with a grin on his face, as he watched the
+departing car, "are we going to be fired or praised?"
+
+"We're going to lay the track across the Man-killer," returned Reade
+resolutely.
+
+"How about the gambler and his bad crowd?  Are we going to beat them?"
+
+"We're going to do whatever the general manager orders, just as long as
+we remain here," replied Tom.  "He's our only source of authority.  If
+he tells me to let Jim Duff bring a cityful of tents out here and run
+night or day--then that's all there will be to it."
+
+"I'd sooner quit," growled Hazelton, "than knuckle to such a crew of
+rascals."
+
+"So would I," nodded Tom good-humoredly,  "if it were my quit.  But, if
+Mr. Ellsworth gives such orders it will be his quit, not ours."
+
+Harry walked restlessly up and down the little office, but Tom threw
+himself down at full length on a cot in the corner.  Within two minutes
+he was sound asleep.
+
+"Humph!" growled Hazelton, as soon as he saw his chum's unconcern.  Then
+he went outside to finish his tramp.
+
+It was toward the close of the afternoon when Mr. Ellsworth returned.
+Harry was out of sight as the general manager stepped directly into the
+office.
+
+"Reade," he began.  Deep breathing from the corner greeted him.  General
+Manager Ellsworth gazed down at the sleeping form, and a new light of
+admiration dawned in his eyes.
+
+"So that's the young man whom they're talking of shooting, poisoning or
+blowing into the next world with dynamite?" he thought.  "A lot this
+young man appears to think about his enemies!  There's real courage in
+this young man.  Reade, wake up--if you can spare the time."
+
+Tom opened his eyes, rubbed them, then sat up, next springing to his
+feet.
+
+"Not having any real work to do makes me sleepy," laughed Tom good-
+naturedly.  "I trust you didn't have to call me many times, Mr.
+Ellsworth?"
+
+The general manager held out his hand.
+
+"Reade, I've just learned in town what a plucky thing you did, and how
+coolly you went through it all.  A young man with your courage and
+purpose simply can't be fool enough to be very far wrong."
+
+"Then you learned that the real Arizona people over in Paloma don't find
+any fault with what I did?" queried Tom.
+
+"Reade, what I discovered is that you have a lot of the finest manhood
+in Arizona just wild with respect for you," declared Mr. Ellsworth.
+Then the general manager lowered his voice before he resumed:
+
+"At the same time, Reade, I've also learned that you've stirred up such
+an evil nest of rattlers that you'll be fortunate if you escape with
+your life.  Candidly, if you feel that you'd like to leave here--"
+
+"Do you want me to quit, sir?" demanded Tom, looking steadily into his
+chief's eyes.
+
+"I don't," declared Mr. Ellsworth promptly.  "If you and Hazelton were
+to quit me now I don't know where I could get another pair of men who
+could put into the work all the skill and energy that you two employ."
+
+"Did you have dinner in town, sir?" Tom asked.
+
+"No, for I came out to take you two young men in.  Hawkins will also be
+with us at dinner this evening.  He has told me about the Mansion House
+affair, so the Cactus House shall be the railway house hereafter.  That
+fellow Ashby is uneasy; I think he will be more than uneasy after a
+while."
+
+The dinner party motored back to town.  Dinner was more like a reception
+that evening, for the news of Tom's plucky fight against the rough
+element had spread through the town.  Nearly two score of men
+representing the better part of the population of Paloma called at the
+hotel to shake hands with the young engineers.
+
+"They don't seem to care a hang about me, these men, do they, Hawkins?"
+laughed the general manager, as he and the superintendent stood in the
+background of the picture.
+
+"That's because they're Arizona men, sir," replied Hawkins.  "Their
+interest is in the man who has done the thing, not in the boss."
+
+"I can understand why President Newnham, of the S. B. & L., recommended
+these young men so extravagantly.  They're full of force and absolutely
+free from self-conceit."
+
+Finally the party motored back towards the camp.  As it was after dark
+now, some of the citizens who had visited them escorted the slow moving
+car as far as the edge of the town, but none of Jim Duff's followers
+appeared on the streets through which they passed.
+
+"Why are we going back to camp, anyway?" demanded Mr. Ellsworth.  "Why
+not sleep at the hotel to-night?"
+
+"Why, I think it may be better for you to go back to the hotel, sir,"
+Tom proposed.  "As for Harry and myself, after what has happened in town
+to-day, it may be as well if we are on hand at the camp to-night.  There
+may be some attempt to stampede our men.  The crowd in Paloma are
+capable of offering our men free drink, just to do us mischief.  We've a
+lot of strong men in our force, but there are some weak vessels who
+would be caught by a free offer, and some of our work gangs would be
+demoralized to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth thereupon decided to return to the camp also, and,
+arriving there, dismissed the car.  A tent was pitched for him close to
+the office, and a cot rigged up in it.
+
+Then the party sat up, chatting, after most of the workmen had turned in
+for the night.
+
+"I'll be thankful when the material gets here," sighed Tom.  "I'm tired
+of loafing."
+
+"It seems to me that you have been doing anything but loafing," smiled
+the general manager.
+
+"I want to get to work on the Man-killer.  Besides, idleness is costing
+the road a lot of money in wages for these men."
+
+"I wired this afternoon," stated Mr. Ellsworth, "to have the material
+trains rushed forward on express schedule as soon as the stuff strikes
+our lines."
+
+"Then--" began Hawkins slowly.
+
+His next words were drowned out by a booming explosion to the westward
+of the camp.
+
+"The scoundrels!" gasped Tom Reade, leaping up.  "This is more of our
+friends' work!  They have dynamited the most ticklish part of the work
+on the Man-killer!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A DYNAMITE PUZZLE
+
+
+"The scoundrels!" cried General Manager Ellsworth.
+
+He was a man who believed in working along easy lines when possible.
+His career as a railroad man had taught him the value of meeting other
+people half way.  Now the general manager's white face and flashing eyes
+revealed the fighter in him.
+
+From off to the south, beyond the quicksand, came a chorus of sharp,
+shrill, gleeful whoops.
+
+"There go the curs!" flared Harry.
+
+Another volley of jeers reached the camp officials.
+
+"They are mounted on horses," spoke Tom judicially.  "They couldn't
+travel as fast on foot and yell at the same time."
+
+A third taunting chorus traveled over the desert.  But Tom and his
+friends, in the darkness of the night, could not make out the horsemen
+nor judge how many there were of them.
+
+"You'd better turn out the camp, Mr. Hawkins," directed Tom in a calmer
+voice.
+
+The superintendent ran over to where a night engineer almost dozed at
+his post beside a stationary engine.
+
+Half a minute later a series of shrill blasts rang out over the camp.
+Laborers came tumbling out of the tents.  Many of them had slept so
+soundly that even the noise of dynamiting they had regarded only as a
+part of their dreams.  But the whistle meant business.
+
+"Get the torches out, Mr. Rivers," called Tom, as one of the foremen
+reported on a run.
+
+To Foreman Payson, Harry gave the order to marshal a hundred of the men
+to remain in and around the camp, alertly watchful.
+
+"That's a good idea," nodded Mr. Ellsworth. "The explosion may be only a
+trick to, empty the camp, as a prelude to further mischief."
+
+Scores of torches flared in the darkness as the workmen hurried
+westward. At the head of all went Tom Reade and the general manager.
+
+Less than half a mile away they came upon the scene of mischief.
+
+"It's just what I expected," nodded Tom, as the leading party halted
+under the flare of the torches.  "You see, sir, here was the point of
+greatest cave and drift in the quicksand.  It's where your former
+engineers found such a morass of the shifty stuff that they declared the
+Man-killer never could have its appetite satisfied with dirt.  There was
+a good log and concrete foundation laid down there, and for thirty-six
+hours the sand had not shifted a particle as far as the eye could
+discover.  Now, look at it!"
+
+Before them the top layer of desert sand had sunk away, revealing a well
+or sink, one hundred and fifty feet across and the bottom at least forty
+feet below the general level.
+
+"I always wondered why a suspension bridge wouldn't solve the problem
+more easily and cheaply than any other construction," muttered Mr.
+Ellsworth, after he had gotten over his first indignation.
+
+"To avoid every possibility of lurking quicksand the suspension bridge
+would have to be more than a mile long," Reade answered.  "Beyond, there
+are other treacherous little patches of quicksand.  It would cost the
+road millions to put up a suspension bridge that would hold.
+
+"A short bridge would look all right and doubtless serve all right, for
+a while.  Then, some fine day, part of the structure would give, and a
+trainload of passengers would be sucked down and out of sight by the
+shifting sands of the Man-killer."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth turned aside with a shudder.
+
+"I'm glad I'm not an engineer," he said earnestly.  "The responsibility
+for safety of life at this point is all yours, Reade."
+
+"And I'm willing enough to take it, sir, if you don't run trains over
+the Man-killer until the new roadbed has stood tests that I'll put upon
+it."
+
+"It'll cost at least ten thousand dollars to repair the mischief that
+the scoundrels have done to-night," figured Harry Hazelton thoughtfully.
+
+"Then, if we can find out the guilty wretches for certain, we'll see
+that they earn more than that amount by enforced labor in prison,"'
+retorted the general manager grimly.
+
+"Mr. Bell!" called Tom briskly.
+
+"Here, sir," reported the foreman, coming forward..
+
+"Mr. Bell, I wish you'd pick out twenty-one good men.  Make the
+brightest of the lot head of the new force of night watchmen.  Place the
+other twenty under his orders.  Your gangs will come into play here
+later than the others, so I'll let your shift of men have the first
+chance at night-watchman duty."
+
+"All right, sir," nodded Foreman Bell.  "Any further orders?"
+
+"None, except that your watchmen will do their best to guard both the
+line of roadbed and the camp. Further, tell the night engineer to be
+sure to have steam up so that he can blow a lot of signals at anytime in
+the night."
+
+"Very good, sir," and the foreman hurried away.
+
+"I'm disgusted with myself for having been caught in this fashion," Tom
+admitted to Mr. Ellsworth.  "But I hadn't an idea that Paloma held any
+dynamite.  I can't imagine how a frontier town on the alkali desert
+needs dynamite."
+
+"It will probably be found that someone shipped it in a hurry,"
+suggested Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"But how?  Any fellow would be detected who had it brought in on our
+trains.  There has been no time to I stage I it from any other point
+since the row with Duff started."
+
+"It's a puzzle," admitted Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"It is, but it won't be for long," Reade declared confidently.  "There
+are ways of finding out how that dynamite got into Paloma, there must be
+ways of finding out who caused it to be brought in."
+
+Then, suddenly, Tom's eyes grew wider open and brighter.
+
+"Mr. Ellsworth, I believe that dynamite was brought in before the
+trouble opened."
+
+"But who would have wished to bring dynamite here until the trouble
+started?"
+
+"Anyone might be interested in doing it who wanted to see trouble
+start."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't follow you, Reade," observed the general manager,
+frowning slightly.
+
+"There were others who wanted the job of blocking the Man-killer," Tom
+went on earnestly.  "They wanted a lot more money for the job than we
+thought was necessary.  I don't want to accuse anyone, but I am just a
+trifle suspicious that the concern of Chicago contractors--"
+
+"The Colthwaite people!" broke in Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"Yes; if they were bad people, and ugly business rivals--"
+
+"How would the Colthwaite people be able to foresee that you were going
+to have a fight with Jim Duff?" interposed Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"I'm going after the answer, if there is one.  I hope to be able to tell
+you the answer one of these days."
+
+Tom and Harry made two trips each, in different directions, to make sure
+that the watch men were awake and alert.  It was nearly eleven o'clock
+when the general manager and his engineers turned in for a night's rest
+--"subject to the approval of Jim Duff," as Tom dryly stated it.
+
+No more interruptions followed during the night, however.  At daylight
+the watchmen sought their tents and the day force began to stir soon
+after.
+
+After the steam whistle bad blown the breakfast call, Reade slipped away
+from his friends to inspect the laborers at the meal.
+
+"There are some of your men absent, Mr. Mendoza," Tom murmured to the
+Mexican foreman.
+
+"Yes, Senor.  Some of my men slipped away in the night."
+
+"Went off to Paloma, eh?"
+
+Mendoza shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Gambling, drinking--both," nodded Tom.
+
+"Undoubtedly, Senor."
+
+"Get the names of your absent Mexicans, and report to me with them."
+
+Reade then went to the other foremen, with the same orders.
+
+Before Tom had seated himself at his own meal, with Harry and Mr.
+Ellsworth, the foremen appeared, lists in their hands.  Tom rapidly ran
+his finger down the lists.
+
+"Twenty-eight Mexicans and fourteen Americans absent from camp," he
+muttered.  "Foremen, when these men come back you may tell them that
+they are no longer needed."
+
+All four of the gang bosses looked somewhat astonished.
+
+"Merely for leaving camp in the night time?" Mendoza inquired.
+
+"Yes, under the circumstances," nodded Tom.  "If any of these men
+declare that they were properly absent, and did not visit the gambling
+and the drinking dives, then such men may be reinstated after they have
+satisfied Mr. Hazelton, Mr. Hawkins or myself of the truth of their
+statements."
+
+"Some of these men will be very ugly when they find that they are
+discharged, Senor," suggested Mendoza.
+
+"But you are loyal to us?"
+
+"Can you doubt it, Senor?" asked Mendoza proudly.
+
+"Then you will know how to handle your own fellow-countrymen.  The other
+foremen will be able to handle the rest of the disgruntled ones.
+However, as I have told you, if any man claims that he is unjustly
+treated, send him to headquarters for a chance at reinstatement."
+
+General Manager Ellsworth had heard the conversation, but had not
+interfered.  As soon as the young engineers were alone he joined them at
+table, saying:
+
+"Aren't you afraid, Reade, that these discharged men will hasten to join
+our enemies?"
+
+"That is very likely, sir," Tom answered.  "These missing men, however,
+have shown their willingness to become our enemies by leaving camp and
+seeking their pleasures in the strongholds of the scoundrels who are
+fighting to break us up."
+
+"That's another way of looking at the matter," assented the general
+manager.
+
+"I'd much rather have our enemies outside of camp than inside," Reade
+continued.  "If we took these absentees back after they've been in the
+company of rascals, then we wouldn't have any means of knowing how many
+of the absentees had agreed to do treacherous things within the camp.
+It would hardly be a wise plan to encourage the breeding of rattlesnakes
+within the camp limits."
+
+It was nearly noon when the first batch of laborers, some American and
+some Mexican, returned to camp.  These men started to go by the
+checker's hut at a distance, but keen-eyed Superintendent Hawkins saw
+them and ordered them around to the hut.
+
+"You'll have to wait here until your foremen are called," declared the
+checker.
+
+"Say, what's the trouble here!" demanded one American belligerently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+READE MEETS A "KICKER" HALF WAY
+
+
+"Who's your foreman?" asked the checker, a young fellow named Royal
+
+"Payson--if it's any of your business." replied the workman roughly.
+
+The others, seeing him take this attitude, were willing to let him talk
+for all.  Superintendent Hawkins had rounded up the foremen, and now
+sent them to the checker's hut to deal with the men.
+
+"Some of you are my men," said Payson, looking the lot over.  "You're
+discharged."
+
+"What's that?" roared the same indignant spokesman, a big, bull-necked,
+red-faced fellow.
+
+"Discharged," said Payson briefly.  "All of you who belong to my gang.
+Checker, I'll call their names off to you."
+
+While Payson, and then the other foremen, were calling the names, the
+workmen stood by in sullen silence.  When the last name had been entered
+the same bull-necked spokesman flared up again.
+
+"Have we no rights?" he demanded.  "Is there no such thing as the right
+of appeal in this camp, or are we under a lot of domineering, petty
+tyrants like you?"
+
+"I'm a poor specimen of tyrant,"' laughed Payson good-naturedly.  "All
+I'm doing, Bellas, is following orders.  Any man who feels that he was
+justified in being away, and that he ought to be kept on the pay rolls
+here, may make his appeal to Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Hazelton or Mr. Reade."
+
+"I'll see Reade!" announced Bellas stiffly.  "That youngster is doing
+all the dirty work here.  I'll go to him straight."
+
+"I'll take you over to his office," nodded Foreman Payson.
+
+"I'm going, too," announced another workman.
+
+"So'm I," added another.
+
+"One at a time, men," advised Payson.  "I think Bellas feels that he's
+capable of talking for all of you."
+
+The other foremen restrained the crowd, while Mr. Payson led Bellas over
+to the headquarters shack.
+
+Tom looked up from a handful of old letters as the two men entered.
+
+"See here, you!" was Bellas's form of greeting.
+
+"Try it again," smiled Tom pleasantly.
+
+"You're the man I want to talk to," Bellas snarled.  "What do you mean
+by--"
+
+"What's your name?" asked Reade quickly.
+
+"None of your--"
+
+"We can never do business on that kind of courtesy," smiled Reade.  "Mr.
+Payson, show the man out and let him come back when he's cooler."
+
+"There isn't anyone here who can show me out!" blustered Bellas,
+swinging his big arms and causing the heavy muscles to stand out.
+
+"If you don't care to behave in a businesslike way, and talk like a man,
+we'll do our best to show you out," Tom retorted, still with a pleasant
+smile.  "What are you here for, anyway?"
+
+"Why have I been fired?" roared Bellas.
+
+"Can't you guess?" queried Tom.
+
+"Was it for going to town and being away all night?"
+
+"Yes, and also for not being on hand this morning."
+
+"There wasn't any work to do," growled Bellas.
+
+"You expected to be paid for your time, and you should have been in
+camp, as your time belonged to the railroad by, right of purchase.
+Bellas, you have been drinking over in town, haven't you?"
+
+"If I have, it's my own business.  I'm no slave."
+
+"Ben gambling, too?"
+
+"None of your--"
+
+"You're in error," Tom answered pleasantly, though firmly.  "The
+gamblers over in Paloma are leagued with the dive keepers against us,
+Bellas.  You know what they did out at the big sink of the Man-killer
+last night.  Any man who goes away from camp and 'enjoys' himself for
+hours among those who are trying to put us out of business shows himself
+to be a friend to the enemies of this camp.  Therefore the man who does
+that shows himself to be one of our enemies, in sympathy if not in
+fact."
+
+"I'm no lawyer," growled Bellas sullenly,  "and I can't follow your flow
+of gab."
+
+"You know well enough what I'm saying to you, Bellas, and you know that
+I'm right.  Since you've been away and joined our enemies we don't want
+you here.  More, we don't intend to have you here.  Mr. Payson has
+dropped you from the rolls, and that cuts you off from this camp.  Now,
+I think you will understand that it is some of our business whether you
+have been over in town emptying your pockets, into Jim Duff's hat.  If
+that is what you have been doing, then we don't want you here, and won't
+have you.  If you haven't been hob-nobbing with our enemies, and paying
+all you had for the privilege, then we'll look into any claims of better
+conduct that you may make, and, if satisfied that you've been telling
+the truth, we'll reinstate you."
+
+"Oh, you make me tired--you kid!" burst from Bellas's lips.
+
+"This isn't an experience meeting," Tom replied, not losing his smile,
+"and I'm not interested in your impressions of me.  Do you wish to make
+any statement advocating your right to be taken on the pay roll again?"
+
+"No, I don't!" roared the angry fellow.  "All I want to do is to show
+you my opinion of you, Tommy!  I can do that best by rubbing your nose
+in the dirt outside."
+
+Foreman Payson flung himself between the big, angry human bull and the
+young chief engineer.
+
+"Don't waste any time or heat on him, Mr. Payson," Tom advised, slipping
+his handful of letters into his coat and tossing that garment to the
+back of the room.  "If Bellas has any grudge against me, I don't want to
+stop him from making his last kick."
+
+Tom took a step forward, his open hands hanging at his sides.  He didn't
+look by any means alarmed, though Bellas appeared to be about twice the
+young chief engineer's size.
+
+So prompt had been Reade's action that, for a moment, Bellas looked
+astounded.  Then, with a roar, he leaped forward, swinging both arms and
+closing in.
+
+Tom Reade had had his best physical training on the football gridiron.
+He dropped, instantly, as he leaped forward, making a low tackle and
+rising with both arms wrapped around Bellas's knees.  Tom took two swift
+steps forward, then heaved his man, head first, out through the open
+doorway.
+
+Bellas landed about eight feet away.  He was not hurt, beyond a jolting,
+and leaped to his feet, shaking both fists.
+
+"Not unless you really insist upon it," smiled Tom, shaking his head.
+"It's too warm for exercise to-day."
+
+"You tricky little whipper-snapper!" roared Bellas, making an angry
+bound for the doorway.
+
+Tom met his angry rush.  Both went down, rolling over and over on the
+ground.  Bellas wound his powerful arms about the boy, and would have
+crushed him.  Though Tom hated to do it, there was no alternative but to
+choke the powerful bully.  Bellas soon let go, dazed and gasping.  Ere
+the big fellow came to his senses sufficiently to know what he was
+about, Reade had hoisted Bellas to one shoulder.
+
+Down by the checker's hut the crowd of curious workmen gasped as they
+saw Tom Reade jogging along with this great load over one shoulder.
+Reaching the line, Tom gave another heave.  Bellas rolled on the ground.
+He was conscious and could have gotten up, but he chose to lay where he
+had fallen and think matters over.
+
+"Don't think I'm peevish, men," Tom called pleasantly.  "I wouldn't have
+done that if Bellas hadn't attacked me.  I had to defend myself.  Now,
+while I'm here, does any man wish to make a claim for justice?  Does
+any man feel that he has been discharged unfairly?"
+
+Three or four men answered, though none of the Mexicans was among the
+number.  When questioned as to whether they had spent the night among
+Jim Duff's friends all the speakers admitted that they had.  Tom then
+made them the same explanation he had offered Bellas.
+
+"That's about all that can be said, isn't it, men?" Tom asked in
+conclusion.  "I am sorry for those of you who feel hurt, but while there
+is bad blood in the air every man must choose between one camp or the
+other. You men chose Jim Duff, and you'll have to abide by your choice."
+
+"But we haven't any money," declared one of the men sullenly.
+
+"Now you're just beginning to understand that Jim Duff won't be a very
+good friend to a penniless man.  Didn't you know that when you shook all
+your change into his hat?"
+
+"Are you going to let us starve?" growled the man.
+
+"You won't starve, nor need you be out of work long," Tom retorted. "Any
+man who can do the work of a railway laborer in this country doesn't
+have to remain out of a job.  Now, I'll ask you to get off the
+railroad's ground."
+
+Tom turned and went back to the office, while Payson and the other
+foremen saw to it that the discharged men left the railroad's property.
+In less than half an hour the disgruntled ones were back in the worst
+haunts of Paloma, spreading the news of Tom Reade's latest outrage.
+
+When Tom reached the office he found Mr. Ellsworth inside.
+
+"I saw what you did, Reade, though you didn't know I was about.  You
+handled it splendidly.  You made it plain enough, too, to the men that
+they had joined the enemy and thereby declared against us."
+
+"Message, Mr. Reade," called the operator from the doorway.
+
+"The construction material train, the first one, will be here within two
+hours," cried Tom, looking up from the paper, his eyes dancing.  "Now we
+can do some of the real work that we've been waiting to do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MAN-KILLER CLAIMS A SACRIFICE
+
+
+In the days that followed Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton were more
+continuously and seriously busy than they had ever been before in their
+lives.
+
+Sometimes it happens that engineers come upon a quicksand that
+apparently has no bottom.  It will be filled and apparently the earth on
+top is solid. After a few days there will follow either a gradual
+shifting away or a sudden cave in, and the quicksand must once more be
+attacked.
+
+This condition had been experienced more than a dozen times with the
+Man-killer before Tom and Harry had been called to solve the problem.
+
+There is no definite way of attacking a quicksand.  Much must depend
+upon the local conditions.  Where it is a small one, yet of seemingly
+considerable depth, it is sometimes quickest and cheapest to cross it
+with a suspension bridge, the terminal pillars resting on sure
+foundations. Some quicksands are overcome by merely filling in new sand
+or loam, patiently, until at last the trap is blocked and a permanently
+solid foundation is laid.  There are many other ways of overcoming the
+difficulty.
+
+The method hit upon by Tom and Harry, after looking over the situation,
+was one that was largely original with them.
+
+It consisted of laying logs, of different lengths, from twelve to
+eighteen feet, in a transverse net work filling in earth on this and
+allowing the structure gradually to sink where the quicksand shifted or
+caved.  The sideway drift, at some points, was overcome by hollow steel
+piles, driven in as firmly as might be, and then filled with cement from
+the top.  A line of such piles when imbedded in the ground, helps to
+make an effective block to side drift.
+
+At the outset a few feet of these steel piles were left exposed above
+the surface, their gradual settling serving as a reliable index to the
+evasive movements of the extensive quicksand underneath.  At other
+points wooden piles were driven in for the same purpose.
+
+General Manager Ellsworth did not spend all his time in camp.  He could
+not do so, in fact, for he had many other pressing duties.  However, he
+ran over frequently, and always appeared satisfied.
+
+"Of course it's too early to talk confidently, Reade," said Mr.
+Ellsworth, one day when the work had been going on steadily for some
+weeks, "but I believe you have the only right method.  I have so
+reported to our directors.  You'll have disappointments, of course, but
+I hope you'll encounter none that you can't overcome."
+
+"I shan't crow until I've seen the test applied to the roadbed over the
+Man-killer," Tom replied thoughtfully.  "After I've seen that test
+applied a couple of times then I'm ready to go before any board and
+swear that the Man-killer has been tamed for all time."
+
+"Speed the day!" replied Mr. Ellsworth, as he climbed into his private
+car to return.   "By the way, you haven't heard anything lately from Jim
+Duff & Company?"
+
+"Not a word," Reade replied.  "I don't believe we're yet through with
+Rough-house camp, however.  They're waiting only until our suspicions
+are allayed.  Once in a while we lose one of our workmen to the enemy,
+and then we have to discharge the poor fellow.  Some of our former men
+have gone away, but there are about thirty of them left in Paloma, and I
+imagine that they're ready to be ugly when the chance comes.  The agent
+of the Colthwaite Company is still in Paloma.  He has been here ever
+since we came."
+
+"Agent of the Colthwaite Company?" repeated the general manager, opening
+his eyes.  "What's his name?"
+
+"Fred Ransom," Tom replied half carelessly.
+
+"Ransom?  Fred Ransom?  I never heard of any Colthwaite agent of that
+name."
+
+"He's one of the Colthwaite people's troublemakers," Tom went on,
+opening his own eyes rather wide.
+
+"If you were sure of this why didn't you report it to me earlier?"
+
+"Why, I supposed your railroad detectives knew all about it.  And that
+you had heard of it long ago," Reade declared.
+
+"I haven't heard a word of it," continued Mr. Ellsworth, coming down the
+steps of his car and standing on the ground once more.  "What proof have
+you of Ransom's business here?"
+
+"None whatever," Tom answered cheerfully, "but I had him spotted the
+first time I heard him talking.  He was too entirely positive that we'd
+fail."
+
+"That was no proof against him."
+
+"No; but Ransom was also certain that the Colthwaite plan was the only
+one that could bring the Man-killer to time."
+
+"Have you any other reason to suspect this main?" queried Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"Only the fact that Ransom and Jim Duff have been close friends."
+
+"Where does Ransom stop?"
+
+"At the Mansion House.  He has a suite of rooms there, and entertains
+some kinds of people, including Duff, very lavishly."
+
+"Keep your eyes on that crowd as much as possible, Reade," directed the
+general manager thoughtfully, as he once more climbed to the platform of
+his car.
+
+"I will, sir; and it might not be a bad idea to have your detectives do
+something of the sort, also."
+
+The general manager did not answer, except by a vague nod as his train
+pulled out from the outskirts of the railway camp.
+
+Tom went back, called for his horse and rode to the westward for another
+look at the Man-killer.  He found Harry, also in saddle, beneath the
+scanty shade of a struggling tree.  Hazelton's quick eyes were taking in
+every detail of the work being done by the several large gangs of
+workmen.
+
+"Tom, if we're away from here by Christmas, there's one present you
+needn't make me," smiled Hazelton wanly, as he caught sight of the
+camera hanging in its leather field case at his chum's side.
+
+"What present is that?" Tom inquired.
+
+"Don't make me a present of a photograph of this awful place.  It's
+photographed on my brain now, and burned in and baked there.  If we ever
+get through with the Man-killer, and get our money, I never want to see
+this spot again."
+
+"I'm not thinking at all of the money," Reade retorted lightly yet
+seriously. "I don't care about the money at present.  Nothing will ever
+satisfy me in life again until I've beaten the Man-killer fairly and
+squarely.  It's the one thing I think about by day and dream of at
+night."
+
+"I know it," sighed Harry half pityingly.
+
+"Well, what else should we think about?" Tom demanded in a low voice.
+"Harry, we have the very job, the identical problem, that has thrown
+down nearly a dozen engineers of fine reputation.  Why, boy, this place
+may be out on the blazing desert, and there may be a dozen
+discouragements every hour, but we've the finest chance, the biggest
+unsolved problem in engineering that we could possibly have.  It's
+glorious."
+
+Tom's eyes glowed.
+
+"Go away," grinned Hazelton mischievously, "or I'll catch some of your
+enthusiasm."
+
+"You don't need any of it," Reade retorted laughingly.  "You've tons of
+enthusiasm stowed away for future use.  You know you have."
+
+"I suppose I have enough enthusiasm," Harry admitted, "but I should like
+to do some actual work.  I ride out on the sands every day and sit
+looking on while the real work is being done.  This problem of
+conquering the Man-killer is growing monotonous.  I'm tired of pegging
+away at the same old task day in and day out."
+
+"Not quite as bad as that," Tom declared.  "There's always something a
+bit new.  If you want work to do right now, ride over and show those
+teamsters where you want them to put the logs that they're bringing up."
+
+This was far too little to satisfy Harry's longing for "doing things,"
+but with a grunt he turned his horse's head and jogged away at a trot.
+
+Tom moved in under the shade of the tree.
+
+"Harry doesn't know enough to appreciate a good thing when he has it,"
+softly laughed Tom, grateful for the scant bit of shade.  "Neither does
+he yet know that often times the brain works best when the body is at
+rest."
+
+Just then Tom heard a sudden shout from the distance, followed by a
+chorus of excited voices.
+
+Instantly the young engineer's gaze turned toward the lately filled-in
+edge of the big sink.
+
+A hundred feet beyond the light platform where some laborers had been
+working Reade beheld only the head and shoulders of one of the workmen.
+
+"The foolish fellow--to go out so far beyond where the men are allowed
+to go!"  gasped the young chief engineer, setting spurs to his horse.
+
+In a few moments Tom had reached the edge of the sink.
+
+"A rope!" he shouted, and seized the thirty-foot lariat that was handed
+him.  With this, Tom, now on foot, ran within casting distance of the
+unfortunate, who was being rapidly enveloped by the quicksand.
+
+"Come back, Mr. Reade!" bellowed Foreman Payson.  "The drift is setting
+in on this side of you.  Back, like lightning, or you're a doomed man!
+You'll be swallowed up by the Man-killer yourself!"
+
+But Tom, intent only on saving the unfortunate laborer beyond, was
+wholly heedless of the fact that his own life was in as great danger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HARRY FIGHTS FOR COMMAND
+
+
+"Come back, Mr. Reade!" implored Foreman Payson.
+
+For Tom, who had made two casts with the lariat and failed, was knee-
+deep in shifting sand himself.
+
+"Keep cool!" the young chief engineer called over his shoulder.  "I'll
+be back--both of us in a minute or two."
+
+The hapless laborer was now engulfed to his neck in the quicksand.
+
+"Save me!  In Heaven's name get me out of this!" begged the poor fellow,
+frenzied by dread of his seemingly sure fate.
+
+"I'm doing the best I can, friend!" Tom called, as he made a fresh cast.
+
+This time the noose of the raw-hide lariat dropped over the laborer's
+head.
+
+"Fight your hands free, man!" Tom called encouragingly.  "Fight your
+hands and chest free, so that you can slip the noose down under your
+armpits. Keep cool and work fast, and we'll have you out.  Don't let
+yourself get excited."
+
+In the meantime Tom was wholly unaware that the engulfing quicksand was
+reaching up gradually toward his hips.
+
+Foreman Payson had ceased to try to attract Tom's attention.  Whatever
+was to be done to save the chief engineer must be done swiftly.  There
+was not another lariat, or any kind of rope at hand.
+
+Behind was a cloud of alkali dust.  Harry Hazelton was riding as fast as
+he could urge a spirited horse.
+
+In another moment Hazelton had reined up at the edge of the group,
+dismounting and tossing the reins to one of the workmen.
+
+"My man, you get on that horse and fly for a rope!" ordered Harry.
+
+This last Hazelton shot back over his shoulder, for he was pushing his
+way through the rapidly forming crowd to Payson's side.  Another foreman
+had just come up.
+
+"Mr. Bell," shouted Harry, "drive the men back who are not needed.  We
+don't want to put a lot of weight on the soil here and cause a further
+cave-in."
+
+By this time Harry was at the edge of the platform.  In a twinkling he
+was out on the sand.
+
+Grip!  Mr. Payson had a strong hold on the collar of the assistant
+engineer.
+
+"Let go of me!" commanded Harry.
+
+"You can't go out there, Mr. Hazelton.  No more lives are to be wasted."
+
+"Let go of me, I tell you!"
+
+"No, sir!" insisted Foreman Payson firmly.
+
+"Let go of me, or I'll fight you!"
+
+"You'll have to fight, then," retorted Payson doggedly, maintaining his
+grip on the lad's coat collar.  "Comeback here!"
+
+Aided by another man, the foreman dragged Hazelton back to the platform.
+
+"Payson, I'll discharge you, if you interfere with me!" stormed
+Hazelton.
+
+"Don't be a fool, sir.  You can't help Mr. Reade.  Be cool, sir.  Keep
+your head and direct us like a man of sense."
+
+"Be a man of sense, and see my chum going under the sands of the Man-
+killer?" flared Hazelton.
+
+He made a bound, doubling his fists threateningly.  Then three or four
+men, at a sign from Payson, seized the young assistant engineer and
+threw him to the ground.
+
+"Tom," called Harry, "order these fools to let me go."
+
+Reade, however, who had just pulled in all the slack of the rawhide
+lariat, and had made it fast about his own left arm, seemed wholly
+unaware of his own great peril.
+
+Tom Reade was now submerged to his waistline in the engulfing sand.
+
+Unless rescued within five minutes the young chief engineer was plainly
+doomed to be swallowed up in the treacherous sands of the Man-killer.
+Only a few seconds below the shifting level of the sand would be enough
+to smother the life out of him.  Scores of strong men, powerless to
+help, watched hopelessly within a few yards of the two whose lives were
+being slowly but surely snuffed out.
+
+The laborer, whose carelessness or ignorance had caused all the trouble,
+was now in the sand up to his mouth.  The agonized watchers could see
+him gradually sinking further.
+
+"Keep up your nerve, friend!" called Tom, in cool encouragement.  "We'll
+soon have you out of that."
+
+Gripping the lariat with both bands, Tom gave a strong, sudden wrench
+and succeeded in drawing the imperiled man out of the sand a few inches.
+
+Then the poor fellow began to settle again moaning piteously as he saw a
+hideous death staring him in the face.
+
+Tom Reade's own face was deathly white from a realization of the other's
+peril.  Of his own danger the young chief engineer had not once stopped
+to think.
+
+Harry Hazelton was again on his feet.  That much Foreman Payson had
+permitted, but strong-armed laborers stood on either side of the boy,
+and their detaining grips were on his arm.
+
+Out yonder the doomed man saw the engulfing sand creeping up on a level
+with his eyes.  He tried to scream, but the sand shifted into his mouth.
+In pitiable terror the poor fellow closed his mouth in order to delay
+death for another moment.  Even to call for help would now be swiftly
+fatal!
+
+Behind came the thunder of hoofs.
+
+"Ropes!" shouted the horseman on Harry's mount.
+
+He rode past the groups of men, close to the platform.  Then, leaping
+from the saddle, the rider tossed a small bundle of ropes at Harry's
+feet.  All were ropes and lines--not a raw-hide among them.
+
+"There he goes!  He's gone!" roared a score of frantic voices, as the
+engulfed laborer sank out of sight in the sand.
+
+Harry Hazelton feverishly uncoiled one of the ropes, gathering a few
+folds in his right hand.
+
+"Catch, Tom!" Harry shouted, making a cast.
+
+The line swirled through the air, then settled on the sands.
+
+"O-o-o-oh!" groaned Hazelton, for the rope had fallen four feet to one
+side of Reade, and the latter, hemmed in as he was, could not reach it.
+
+"Take your time and make a sure throw, Harry!" Tom called cheerily.
+
+Again Hazelton made a throw--and failed.
+
+"Let me, have that!  My head's cooler," called Foreman Payson.
+
+He made two quick, steady throws, but each shot wide of the mark.
+
+"Let me have that!" screamed Harry, snatching the line away.
+
+"There are lines enough.  Two men might be making throws," spoke a quiet
+voice behind them.
+
+Payson nodded, and bent over for another line.
+
+All trace of the doomed laborer had now disappeared.  As for Tom, the
+sand was reaching up under his arm-pits.  The young chief engineer had
+had the presence of mind to keep his arms free, but soon they too must
+be swallowed up.
+
+"Good throw--whoever sent it!" cheered Tom Reade, as a final cast--
+Harry's--sent a line within six inches of his face.
+
+Tom could not see those back at the platform, for his back was turned to
+the eastward, and he could no longer swing his body about.
+
+"Get it under your arms-quick, Tom, or you're done for, too!" screamed
+Harry.
+
+"Keep cool, old chap!" came back the unconcerned answer.  "It isn't half
+bad out here.  The sand feels really cool about one's body."
+
+"This is no time for nonsense!" ordered Hazelton hoarsely.  "Have you
+the line fast?"
+
+"Yes!" nodded Reade.  "Haul away!  Careful, but strong and steady!"
+
+Under Foreman Payson's direction a score of men seized the other end of
+the line and then began to haul.
+
+Harry danced up and down in a frenzy.
+
+"Tom, you idiot," he gasped.  "You haven't made the line fast about
+yourself."
+
+"Not yet," came the cheery answer.  "That wouldn't be fair play.  Haul
+away on our friend out yonder."
+
+Tom Reade had knotted the line fast to his end of the rawhide lariat
+that was tied under the shoulders of the engulfed laborer.  It was
+magnificent, though seemingly a useless sacrifice of his own life for
+one who must already be dead.
+
+From some of the workmen a faint cheer went up as the slowly incoming
+line hauled the head of the unconscious laborer above the sand.  A foot
+at a time the body came toward them over the sand.
+
+Harry, however, scarcely noted the rescue.  He was frantically working
+with another line, knotting it in a sort of harness under his own
+shoulders.
+
+"Come here, some of you men!" he called.  "Bear a hand here!  Lively!"
+
+Foreman Payson was instantly at the side of the young assistant
+engineer.
+
+"What are you trying to do, Mr. Hazelton?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm going out on the sands," retorted Harry.  "I'm going to reach Tom
+Reade.  If I go under the men can aid me."
+
+"But that isn't a rawhide line; it's hemp," objected Foreman Payson.
+
+"It's strong enough," retorted Hazelton impatiently.
+
+"I don't know about that."
+
+"It will have to do," insisted Hazelton.  "You men get a good hold.
+Also, one of you play out this other line that I'm taking with me for
+Tom Reade."
+
+"Don't risk anything foolish, Harry!" called the voice of Tom Reade, who
+now felt the sand under his chin.
+
+"I'm coming to you," Tom, shouted Harry.
+
+"It's too dangerous. Don't!"
+
+"I've got to come to you!"
+
+"I tell you don't!  Maybe I can get myself out."
+
+"Yes, you can," jeered Hazelton.  "Tom, if you went under, do you think
+I could ever go back to our native town?"
+
+"Payson!" shouted Tom.
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Don't let Mr. Hazelton come--yet.  Seize him!"
+
+"I've got him, sir!"
+
+Harry felt himself seized by the strong arms of the foreman.
+
+"You don't go, sir," Payson insisted.  "It's a criminal waste of life."
+
+"Man, unhand me.  Let me go, I tell you."
+
+"I won't, sir.  I've Mr. Reade's orders."
+
+"He's helpless and no longer in command," Harry retorted.
+
+"He's in command enough for me, sir."
+
+"Payson!"  Harry Hazelton's fierce gaze burned into the eyes of the
+foreman.  "If Tom Reade dies out yonder, and you've hindered me from
+saving him--I'll have your life for forfeit!"
+
+Before that burning look even Payson shrank back.  Harry Hazelton,
+ordinarily the best natured of boys, was now in terrible earnest.
+
+"That's right," muttered Hazelton.  "Men, I take command here.  You
+needn't heed any words from Reade.  Now, you men on the lines watch
+close and listen keenly for my orders."
+
+With that Hazelton darted out on the deadly, treacherous sands!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CHEATING THE MAN-KILLER
+
+
+For the first few yards the assistant engineer ran almost as well as
+though on a cinder track.  Then his feet sank in.  Soon he stumbled.
+
+Then there came a time, within ten feet of Tom, when Harry felt his feet
+settling in the sand despite his efforts to pull himself out.
+
+In the meantime the haulers on the other line had forgotten to pull the
+laborer nearer to safety.
+
+"You men get your eyes on the job!" sternly commanded Payson, who seemed
+capable of having eyes everywhere.
+
+Harry got out, somehow.  He made a bound, landing within arm's length of
+Tom Reade.
+
+"I'm here, old chum!" gasped Hazelton.
+
+"I knew you'd be," returned Tom calmly, "if there were any way of doing
+it."
+
+Harry pulled himself together and floundered still closer.
+
+Nor was there a moment to be lost.  Tom was already reduced to the
+choice between silence and having his mouth filled with sand.
+
+Harry's hands worked with lightning speed.  Feverishly he dug out the
+sand, until he had scooped away enough to bare Tom's shoulders and a few
+inches beneath.
+
+Swoop!  Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down
+to a snug noose under his armpits.
+
+From the platform a cheer went up, for the unconscious laborer had just
+been hauled to safety.
+
+It was with a thrill of horror that Hazelton found his own legs firmly
+embedded in the sand well up to his thighs.
+
+"Get Reade started first!" shouted the young assistant engineer.  "Don't
+bother with me until I give the word."
+
+How the line fastened to Tom tightened and strained!  At times it seemed
+as though it must give way.
+
+Presently Tom's shoulder and a part of his torso were free.
+
+In the meantime Harry Hazelton had sunk in up to the waist line.
+
+"We'll haul on you, too, now, Mr. Hazelton!" sounded the voice of
+Foreman Payson.
+
+"Don't  you dare do it until I give the word," thundered back the voice
+of the assistant engineer.
+
+With a line securely about him, Harry felt that he could afford to take
+the slight chance of waiting his turn.
+
+He saw Tom's knees coming up out of the sand before he called:
+
+"Now, Payson, you can give me a little boost if you like.  Don't pull me
+in ahead of Tom Reade, however."
+
+Presently deafening cheers went up.  Both young engineers were being
+slowly, surely hauled to safe ground.
+
+Then Tom and Harry reached a spot where they could rise to their own
+feet and floundered.  Tom started, then swayed dizzily.
+
+"Steady, there, old Gridley boy!" mumbled Hazelton, slipping an arm
+around his recovered chum.
+
+Then the two young engineers reached the platform and a fresh tumult of
+joyful cheering burst forth.
+
+"Payson," exclaimed Harry, going up to the foreman, and holding out his
+hand, "will you accept my apologies for all I said to you?  I had to use
+strong language, or you'd have held me back from Reade."
+
+"I didn't believe he could be saved," returned the foreman, with a
+sickly smile, as he grasped Hazelton's outstretched hand.
+
+Tom, too weak at first to stand, had dropped to his knees at the side of
+the unconscious laborer, over whom some of the bystanders were working
+in stupid fashion.
+
+"This man must have medical attention at once!"  Tom declared.  "Some of
+you men lift him to your shoulders.  Be careful not to jolt him, but
+travel at a jog all the way to the office building.  Harry,  can you sit
+on your horse?"
+
+"Surely," said the young assistant.
+
+"Lucky boy, then," smiled Reade.  "I won't be able to sit in saddle for
+some minutes.  Ride into camp and tell the operator to wire swiftly for
+a physician to come out and attend to that man."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"I'm here, am I not!" smiled Reade.
+
+"I should say you are, Mr. Reade!" came a hoarse, friendly roar from one
+of the laborers.
+
+Hazelton did not delay.  He was soon speeding back over the desert.
+
+As for Tom, there were many offers of assistance, but he explained that
+all he needed was to keep quiet and have a chance to get his breath
+back.
+
+Payson, in the meantime, had started the work going again, though most
+of his men toiled with far less spirit than before the accident.
+
+Ten minutes later Tom mounted his horse and rode slowly back toward
+camp. By the time he reached there he made out the automobile of a
+Paloma physician coming in haste.
+
+Tom was still weak enough to tremble as Harry stepped outside and helped
+him to the ground.
+
+"Harry," Reade remarked dryly, "I'm not going to bother to thank you for
+such a simple little thing as saving my life out yonder.  I am well
+aware that you had the time of your life in doing it."
+
+"I might have had the time of my life," returned Harry, with an
+imitation of his chum's calmness, "if there had been more excitement
+about it.  It was all rather dull, wasn't it, old chap?"
+
+Smiling, both stepped inside.  Then Tom's face became grave when he saw
+that the rescued laborer had not yet recovered consciousness.
+
+"Somewhere in the world," murmured Reade, as he dropped to one knee and
+rested a finger-tip on the laborer's pulse, "there's someone--a woman,
+or a child, or a white-haired old man--who wouldn't wish us to let this
+man die. What have you men been doing for him?"
+
+Before the answer could be given a honk sounded at the door.  Then a
+young doctor clad in white duck and carrying a three-fold medicine case,
+stepped inside.
+
+"Sucked down by the sand and hauled out again, Doc," Tom explained.
+
+The physician looked closely at his patient and Harry drove out the men
+who had no especial business there.
+
+"A little pin-head of glonoin on his tongue for a beginning," decided
+the physician, opening his case.  From one of the vials he took a small
+pellet, forcing it between the lips of the unconscious man.  Then, with
+his stethoscope, he listened for the heart beats.
+
+"Another glonoin, and then we'll start in to wake up our friend," said
+the young doctor in white duck, after a pause.
+
+Two or three minutes later the laborer opened his eyes.
+
+"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 glass 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 competitor."
+
+"A competitor!" 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 assured 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 asserted boldly.
+"Still, I don't suppose you want me out here."
+
+"On the contrary, I greatly enjoy seeing you here," Tom declared.  "I'm
+very grateful for the praise you offered me a moment ago."
+
+"You're welcome," returned the Colthwaite agent, trying hard to smile.
+"However, I won't take up your time.  Good afternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon, then," nodded Tom.  "Drop in again, won't you?  Any
+time within  working hours."
+
+"Confound that fellow Reade!" muttered Ransom angrily as he rode back to
+Paloma.  "He knows altogether too much--or suspects it.  I shall have to
+call Jim Duff's attention to him!"
+
+"Why did you string the fellow so?" asked Harry when the chums were
+alone once more.
+
+"I didn't," Reade retorted.  "I came very close to giving him straight
+information."
+
+"Now he'll be more on his guard."
+
+"That won't do him any good," Tom yawned.  "He has been on his guard all
+along, yet we found him out.  For that matter, any man who lives
+regularly at the Mansion House these days is open to our suspicion."
+
+For the Mansion House, ever since Tom's having been ordered away, had
+been a losing proposition.  Now and then a traveling salesman stopped
+there, though not many.
+
+"By the way, Harry," predicted Tom, as the chums were riding back to
+Paloma at the close of the afternoon, "look out, in about three of four
+days, for a new and permanent guest at the Cactus House."
+
+"Who's coming?" inquired Hazelton.
+
+"Whatever man the Colthwaite Company decides to send to the Cactus House
+as soon as headquarters in Chicago receives Ransom's report.  I think
+we'll know that new chap, too, when he shows up.  Also, you'll find that
+the new man is either an avowed enemy of Ransom, after a little, or else
+he won't choose to know Ransom at all."
+
+"That's pretty wild guessing," scoffed Harry Hazelton.
+
+"Wait three or four days, and see whether it's guessing or one of the
+fine fruits of logic," proposed Reade.  "Incidentally, the Colthwaite
+people will wonder why it didn't occur to them before to send one of
+their gloom men to live at the Cactus.  Fact is, I've been looking for
+the chap for more than a fort-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HOW THE TRAP WAS BAITED
+
+
+It was the evening of the day after Harry, who had insisted on trudging
+up and down the line all day, instead of using his horse, had a touch of
+heat headache.
+
+He was not in a serious condition, but he needed rest.  He dropped into
+one of the chairs on the Cactus House porch and prepared to doze.
+
+"Is there anything I can get for you, or do for you, old chap?" inquired
+Tom, coming out on the porch after supper and looking remarkably
+comfortable and contented.
+
+"No; just let me doze," begged Harry.  "I feel a trifle drowsy."
+
+"Then, if you're going to give a concert through your nose," smiled Tom,
+"I may as well protect myself by going some distance away."
+
+"Go along."
+
+"I believe I'll take a walk.  Probably, too, the ice cream man will be
+richer when I get back."
+
+Tom went down into the street and sauntered along.  He had walked but a
+few blocks when he met another young man in white ducks.
+
+"Doc, I'm looking for the place where the ice cream flows," Reade
+hinted. "Can I tempt you?"
+
+"Without half trying," laughed Dr. Furniss the young physician who had
+gone out to camp to attend the Man-killer victim.
+
+As they were seated together over their ice cream, Dr. Furniss inquired:
+
+"By the way, do you ever see my one-time patient nowadays?"
+
+"The fellow we exhumed from the Man-killer?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"I see him every morning," laughed Tom.  "Really, I can't help seeing
+him, for the man puts himself in my way daily to say good morning.  And
+as yet I haven't learned his name."
+
+"His name is Tim Griggs," replied Dr. Furniss.  "He's a fine fellow,
+too, in his rough, manly way.  He's wonderfully grateful to you, Reade.
+Do you know why?"
+
+"Haven't an idea."
+
+"Well, Tim's sheet anchor in life is a little girl."
+
+"Sweetheart?"
+
+"After a fashion," laughed the young doctor.  "The girl is his daughter,
+eight years old.  She's everything to Tim, for his wife is dead.  The
+child lives with somewhat distant relatives, in a New England town.  Tim
+sends all his spare money to her, and so the child is probably well
+looked after. Tim told me, with a big choke in his voice, that, if the
+Man-killer had swallowed him up, it would have been all up with the
+little girl, too. When money stopped coming the relatives would probably
+have set the child to being household drudge for the family.  Tim has a
+round dozen of different photos of the child taken at various times."
+
+"Then I'm extra glad we got him out of the Man-killer," said Tom rather
+huskily.
+
+"I knew you'd be glad, Reade.  You're that kind of fellow."
+
+"Tim Griggs, then, is probably one of our steady men," Tom remarked,
+after a while.
+
+"Steady!  Why the man generally sends all of his month's pay, except
+about eight dollars, to his daughter.  From what he tells me she is a
+sharp, thrifty little thing.  She pays her own board bill with her
+relatives, chooses and pays for her own clothes, and puts the balance of
+the money in bank for herself and her father."
+
+"Does Tim ever go to see her?"
+
+"Once in two years, regularly.  He'd go east oftener, but it costs too
+much money.  He'd live near her, but he says he can earn more money down
+here on the desert.  Tim even talks about a college education for that
+idolized girl.  She looks out just as sharply for her daddy.  Whenever
+Tim is ready to make a trip east, she sends him the money for his fare.
+The two have a great old time together."
+
+"Tim may marry again one of these days, and then the young lady may not
+have as happy a time," remarked Tom thoughtfully.
+
+"I hinted as much to Griggs," replied Dr. Furniss, "but he told me,
+pretty strongly, that there'll be no new wife for him until he has
+helped the daughter to find her own place in life."
+
+"Say!" muttered Tom, with a queer little choke in his voice.  "The
+heroes in life generally aren't found on the high spots, are they?"
+
+"They're not," retorted the doctor solemnly.
+
+Half an hour later, after having eaten their fill of ice cream, Dr.
+Furniss and Engineer Reade parted, Tom strolling on alone in the
+darkness.
+
+"I can It get that fellow Griggs out of my mind," muttered Tom.  "To
+think that a splendid fellow like him is working as a laborer!  I wonder
+if he isn't fitted for something better--something that pays better?
+Look out, Tom Reade, you old softy, or you'll be doing something
+foolish, all on account of a primary school girl in New England whom
+you've never seen, and never will!  I wonder--hello!"
+
+As Tom had walked along his head had sunk lower and lower in thought.
+His sudden exclamation had been brought forth by the fact that he had
+bumped violently into another human being.
+
+"Cantch er look out where you're going?" demanded an ugly voice.
+
+"I should have been looking out, my friend," Tom replied amiably.  "It
+was very careless of me.  I trust, that I haven't done you serious
+harm."
+
+"Quit yer sass!" ordered the other, who was a tall, broad-shouldered and
+very surly looking fellow of thirty.
+
+"I don't much blame you for being peevish," Reade went on.  "Still, I
+think there has been no serious harm done.  Good night, friend."
+
+"No, ye don't!" snarled the other.  "Nothing of the slip-away-easy
+style, like that!"
+
+"Why, what do you want?" I asked Tom, opening his eyes in genuine
+surprise.
+
+"Ye thick-headed idiot!" rasped the surly stranger.  "Ye--"
+
+From that the stranger launched into a strain of abuse that staggered
+the young engineer.
+
+"Say no more," begged Reade generously.  "I accept your apology, just as
+you've phrased it."
+
+"Apology, ye fool!" growled the stranger.
+
+"That won't do.  Put up your hands!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"So ye can fight, ye--"
+
+"Fight?" echoed Tom, with a shake of his bead.  "On a hot night like
+this? No, sir!  I refuse."
+
+Tom would have passed peaceably on his way, but the stranger suddenly
+let go a terrific right-hander.  Had Tom Reade received the blow he
+would have gone to the ground.  But the young engineer's athletic
+training stood by him.  He slid out, easily and gracefully, but was
+compelled to wheel and face his assailant.
+
+"Don't," urged Tom.  "It's too hot."
+
+"I'm hot myself," leered the stranger, dancing nearer.
+
+"You look it," Tom admitted.  "If you don't stop dancing, you'll soon be
+hotter.  It makes me warm to look at you."
+
+"Stop this one, ye tin-horn!" snarled the stranger.
+
+"Certainly," agreed Tom, blocking the blow.  "However, I wish you
+wouldn't be so strenuous.  One of us may get hurt."
+
+This last escaped Reade as he blocked the blow, and again displayed a
+neat little bit of footwork.
+
+"Let's see you stop this one!" taunted the bully.
+
+"Certainly," agreed Tom, and did so.
+
+"And this one.  And this!   Here's another!"
+
+By this time the blows were raining in fast and thick.  Tom's agile
+footwork kept him out of reach of the hard, hammer-like fists of the
+stranger.
+
+Tom had been bred in athletics.  He was comparative master of boxing,
+but before this interchange of blows had gone far the young engineer
+realized that he had met a doughty opponent.
+
+What Tom didn't know was that his present foe was an ex-prizefighter,
+who had sunk low in the scale of life.
+
+What the lad didn't even suspect was that the man had been hired to pick
+a fight with him, and that the fight was for desperate stakes.
+
+"Have you pounded me all you think necessary?" asked Tom coolly, after
+more than a minute's hard interchange of blows in which neither man had
+gained any notable advantage.
+
+"No, ye slant-eared boob!" roared the assailant.  "Ye--"
+
+Here he launched into another stream of abuse.
+
+"You said all that before," remarked Tom, with a new flash in his eyes.
+Then fully aroused, he went to work in earnest, intending to drive his
+opponent back and down him.
+
+The fighting became terrific.  There was little effort now to parry, for
+each fighter had become intent on bringing the other to earth.
+
+Tom was soon panting as he fought, for his opponent was heavier, taller
+and altogether out of the youth's fistic class.
+
+"If I can only reach his wind once, and topple him over!" thought Reade.
+
+A blow aimed at his jaw he failed to block.  The impact sent the young
+engineer half staggering.  Another blow, and Tom dropped, knocked out.
+
+At that very instant a street door near by opened noiselessly.
+
+"I've got him," leered the bully, bending over the senseless form of Tom
+Reade.
+
+"Bring him in!" ordered a voice behind the open doorway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+TOM HEARS THE PROGRAM
+
+
+Throwing his arms around Tom, the bully lifted him and bore him inside,
+dropping him on the floor in the dark.
+
+"He's some tough fighter," muttered Tom's assailant.  "I didn't know but
+he'd get me."
+
+"No; he couldn't," replied the other voice.  "I was just opening the
+door so I could slip out and give him a clip in the dark."
+
+"He's coming to," muttered the bully.  "Ye'll have to tell me what you
+want done with him."
+
+The speaker had knelt by Tom, with a hand roughly laid against the young
+engineer's pulse.  Neither plotter could see the boy, for no light had
+been struck in the room.
+
+"Pick him up," ordered the one who appeared to be directing affairs.
+"If he comes to while you're carrying him you can handle him easily
+enough, can't you?"
+
+"Of course.  Even after he knows pie from dirt he'll be dazed for a few
+minutes."
+
+"Come along with him."
+
+"Strike a light."
+
+For answer the director of this brutal affair flashed a little glow from
+a pocket electric lamp.
+
+The way led down a hallway, through to the back of the house, and thence
+down a steep flight of stairs into a cellar.
+
+The man who appeared to be in charge of this undertaking had brought a
+lantern, holding it ahead of the man who carried Tom's unconscious form.
+
+"Dump him there," ordered the man with the lantern.
+
+"He's stirring," reported the fighter, after having dropped young Reade
+to the hard earthen floor.
+
+"Take this then," replied the other, who, having hung the lantern on a
+hook overhead, had stepped off beyond the fringe of darkness.  He now
+returned with a shotgun, which he handed to the fighter who had attacked
+the young chief engineer in the street.
+
+"Do you want me to shoot him?" whispered the other huskily.
+
+"If you have to, but I don't believe it will be necessary.  The cub will
+soon understand that his safety depends entirely on doing as he is
+told."
+
+"Say," muttered Tom thickly.  He stirred, opened his eyes, then sat up,
+looking dazed.
+
+"Don't move or talk too much," advised the man with the shotgun.  As he
+spoke, he moved the muzzle close to Reade's face.
+
+"Hello!" muttered Tom, blinking rather hard.
+
+"Hello yourself.  That's talking enough for you to do," snapped the
+bully.
+
+"Was that the thing you hit me over the head with at the finish?"
+inquired the young engineer curiously.
+
+"Careful!  You're expected to think--not talk," leered his captor.  "If
+ye want something to think about ye can remember that I have fingers on
+both triggers of this gun."
+
+"I can see that much," Tom assented.  "Why do you think that it's
+necessary to keep that thing pointed at me?  Have you got me in a place
+where you feel that facilities for escaping are too great?"
+
+The word "facilities" appeared too big for the mind of the bully to
+grasp.
+
+"I don't know what ye're talkin' about," he grumbled.
+
+"Neither do I," Tom admitted cheerily.  "My friend, I'm not going to
+irritate you by pretending that I know more than you do.  In fact, I
+know less, for I have no idea what is about to happen to me here, and
+that's something that you do know."
+
+"No; I don't," glared his captor,  "and I don't care what is going to
+happen to you."
+
+Back of the fringe between light and darkness steps were heard on the
+cellar stairs.  Then someone moved steadily forward until he came into
+the light.
+
+"Hello, Jim!" Tom called good-humoredly.
+
+"Don't try to be too familiar with your betters, young man!" came the
+stern reply.
+
+"Oh, a thousand pardons, Mr. Duff," Tom amended hastily.  "I didn't
+intend to insult your dignity.  Indeed, I am only too glad to find you
+resolved to be dignified."
+
+"If you try to get fresh with me," growled the gambler, "I'll knock your
+head off."
+
+"Call it a slap on the wrist, and let it go at that," urged Tom.  "I'm
+very nervous to-night, and a blow on the head might make me worse."
+
+"Nothing could make you worse," growled, Duff, turning on his heel, "and
+only death could improve you."
+
+"Then I'm distinctly opposed to the up-lift," grinned Tom, but Duff had
+disappeared into a darker part of the cellar and the young engineer
+could not tell whether or not his shaft had reached its mark.
+
+"Ye wouldn't be so fresh if ye had a good idea of what ye're up against
+to-night," warned the bully with the gun.
+
+"I fancy a good many of us would tone down if we could look ahead for
+three whole days," Tom suggested.
+
+Other steps were now heard on the stairs.  The newcomers remained
+outside the illuminated part of the cellar until still others arrived.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," proposed the voice of Jim Duff, "suppose we have a
+look at the troublemaker."
+
+"They can't mean me," Tom hinted to his immediate captor.
+
+"Shut up!" came the surly answer.
+
+Fully a dozen men now moved forward.  With the single exception of Duff,
+each had a cloth, with eye-holes, tied in place over his face.
+
+"My, but this looks delightfully mysterious!" chuckled Tom.
+
+"You be still, boy, except when you answer something that calls for a
+reply," ordered Jim Duff, who had dropped all of the surface polish of
+manner that he usually employed.  "This meeting need not last long, and
+I'll do most of the talking."
+
+"Won't these other gentlemen present be allowed to do some of the
+talking?" the young engineer inquired.
+
+"They don't want to," Duff explained gruffly.  "That might lead to their
+being recognized."
+
+"Oh, that's the game?" mused Tom Reade aloud.  "Why, I thought they had
+the handkerchiefs over their faces because--"
+
+"Shut up and listen!" warned Jim Duff.
+
+"...because," finished Tom, "they wanted me to feel that everything was
+being done regularly and in good dime-novel form.  My, but they do look
+like some of the fellows that Hen Dutcher used to tell us about.  Hen
+used to waste more time on dime novels than--"
+
+"Shut up!" again commanded Duff.  "These gentlemen feel that there is no
+need of their being recognized."
+
+"Then why didn't Fred Ransom, of the Colthwaite Company, cover up the
+scar on his chin?" retorted Reade.  "Why didn't Ashby, of the Mansion
+House, invent a new style of walking for the occasion?"
+
+Both men named drew hastily back into the shadow.  Tom chuckled quietly.
+
+"I could name a few others," Tom continued carelessly.  "In fact--I
+think I know you all.  Gentlemen, you might as well remove your masks."
+
+"Club him with the butt of the gun, if he talks too much," Duff directed
+the bully, who had stepped back a few paces as the men formed a circle
+around the young engineer.
+
+"Did you ever try to stop water from running down hill, Duff," Tom
+inquired good-humoredly.
+
+"What has that to do with--" began the gambler angrily.
+
+"Nothing very much," Tom admitted.  "Only it's a waste of time to try to
+bind my tongue.  The only thing you can do is to gag me; but, from some
+things you've let drop, I judge that you want me to do some of the
+talking presently."
+
+"We do," nodded Duff, seeking to regain his temper.  "However, it won't
+do you any good to attempt to do your talking before you've heard me."
+
+"If I've been interfering with your rights, then I certainly owe you an
+apology," Tom answered, with mock gravity.  "May I beg you to begin your
+speech?"
+
+"I will if you'll keep quiet long enough, boy," Jim Duff retorted.
+
+"I'll try," sighed Reade.  "Let's hear you."
+
+"This committee of gentlemen--" began the gambler.
+
+"All gentlemen?" Tom inquired gravely.
+
+"This committee," Duff started again, "have concerned themselves with
+the fact that you have done much to make business bad here in Paloma.
+You have prevented hundreds of workmen from coming into Paloma to spend
+their wages as they otherwise would have done."
+
+"Some mistake there," Reade urged.  "I can't control the actions of my
+men after working hours."
+
+"You've persuaded them against coming into town," retorted Duff sternly.
+"None of the A. G. & N. M. workmen come into Paloma with their wages."
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," Tom nodded.  "It's the effect of taking good
+advice, not the result of orders."
+
+Some of the masked listeners stirred impatiently.
+
+"It's all the same," Jim growled.  "Your men don't come into town, and
+Paloma suffers from the loss of that much business."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it."
+
+"So this committee," the gambler went on, "has instructed me to inform
+you that your immediate departure from Paloma will be necessary if you
+care to go on living."
+
+"I can't go just yet," Tom declared, with a shake of his bead.  "My work
+here at Paloma isn't finished."
+
+"Your work  will be finished before the night is over, if you don't
+accept our orders to leave town," growled Duff.
+
+"Dear me!  Is it as bad as that?" queried Reade.
+
+"Worse, as you'll find!  What's your answer, Reade?"
+
+"All I can say then," Tom replied innocently, "is that it is too bad."
+
+Clip!  Jim Duff bent forward, administering a smart cuff against the
+right side of the sitting engineer's face.
+
+"Don't do that!" warned Tom, leaping lithely to his feet.  He faced the
+gambler coolly, but the lad's muscles were working under the sleeves of
+his shirt.
+
+Duff drew back three steps, after which he faced the boy, eyeing him
+steadily.
+
+"Reade, you've heard what we have to say to you.  That you can't go on
+living in Paloma.  Are you ready to give us your word to leave Paloma
+before daylight, and never come back?"
+
+"No," Tom replied flatly.
+
+"Then," sneered the gambler, fixing the gaze of his snake-like eyes on
+the young chief engineer, "I'll tell you what we have provided for you.
+We shall take you to the edge of the town, at once, and there hang you
+by the neck to a tree.  After you've ceased squirming we'll fasten this
+card to you."
+
+From another man present Jim snatched a printed card, bearing this
+legend:
+
+"Gone, for the good of the community!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE COUNCIL OF THE CURB
+
+
+"How soon are you going to carry out your plans?" Reade demanded.
+
+"Then you won't leave Paloma?"
+
+"I certainly won't--as far as my own decision goes," Reade replied
+firmly. "Furthermore, I should feel the utmost contempt for myself if I
+allowed you to drive me away from here before my work is completed."
+
+"You're a fool!" hissed Duff.
+
+"And you're a gambler," Tom shot back.  "If you won't change your trade,
+why should you expect me to change mine?"
+
+"I reckon, gentlemen," said Duff, turning to the others present, "that
+there's no use in wasting any more time with this fellow.  He'd rather
+be hanged to a tree than take good advice.  If the rest of you agree
+with me, I propose that we take the cub to his tree at once."
+
+Several spoke in favor of this plan.  Tom, seeing this, felt his heart
+sink somewhat within him, though he was no more inclined than before to
+accede to the demands of the rascals.
+
+"Grab him!  Throw him down; tie and gag him," were the gambler's orders.
+
+Two men nearest the young engineer sprang at him.
+
+"We'll play this game right through to the finish, then!" burst from
+Tom's lips, and there was something like fury in his voice.
+
+Biff! Thump!
+
+Two of the townsmen of Paloma, wholly unprepared for resistance, went
+down before the engineer's telling blows.
+
+"Your turn, Duff!" rumbled Reade's voice, as he sprang forward and
+launched a terrific blow at the gambler.
+
+Duff went down, almost doubling up as he struck.  He had been hit
+squarely on the jaw with a force that made even Tom Reade's hardened
+knuckles ache.
+
+"Shoot him!" rose a snarl, as others moved toward the boy.
+
+"All right!" assented Tom, his voice ringing cheerily despite his anger.
+"Be cowards, as comes natural to you.  Yet, if you have the courage of
+real men I'll agree to fight my way out of this place, meeting you one
+at a time."
+
+"What's that noise up in the street?" suddenly demanded Ashby, in a tone
+of sudden fear.
+
+"Run up and find out, if you want to know," proposed Tom, who stood
+poised, ready for another assailant to come within reach of his fists.
+
+Stealthily, on tip-toe, the bully who had first engaged Reade in the
+street fight, was now trying to get up behind the young engineer.  The
+bully held the shotgun ready to bring down on the lad's head.
+
+"There's some row up there," continued Ashby.  "There, I heard shots!"
+
+"Brave, aren't you?" jeered Tom.
+
+Three or four of the masked cowards started for the steep stairway.
+
+Even the bully with the clubbed shotgun must have been seized with fear;
+for, though in position to strike, he quickly lowered the weapon and
+listened.
+
+Bump! smash! sounded, though not directly overhead.
+
+Then from the hallway above came the noise of the treading of many feet,
+while a voice roared hoarsely:
+
+"Spread through the house, boys!  If they've done anything to Mr. Reade,
+then break the necks of every white-livered rascal you can find!"
+
+"Fine!" chuckled Tom, while the masked faces in the cellar turned even
+whiter than the cloths covering them.  "That voice sounds familiar to
+me, too."
+
+Over the hubbub of voices above sounded some remonstrating tones, as
+though others were urging a less violent course.
+
+"It's the workmen from the camp!" guessed Hotelman Ashby, in a voice
+that shook as though from ague.
+
+"Sounds like it," chuckled Tom.  "Cheer up, Ashby.  If it's our railroad
+crew I'll try to see to it that they don't do more than half kill you!"
+
+Then, raising his voice, Tom called gleefully:
+
+"Hello, there!  You'll find us in the cellar."
+
+"Why don't you kill that fool!" muttered Jim Duff, who, still dazed,
+struggled to sit up.
+
+"Hush, man, for goodness sake!" implored the badly frightened Ashby.
+
+Duff, with rapidly returning consciousness, now leaped to his feet,
+drawing his pistol and springing at Reade.
+
+"Hold on!" Tom proposed coolly.  "You're too late!"
+
+The sudden flooding of light into the place and the rush of hobnailed
+shoes on the stairs recalled even the gambler's scattered senses.
+
+"There they are!" yelled a voice.  "Grab 'em!  Be careful you don't hit
+Mr. Reade."
+
+In another instant the cellar was the center of a wild scene.  Railway
+laborers flooded the little place.  While some held dark lanterns that
+threw a bright glow over the scene, others leaped upon the masked ones,
+tearing the cloths from their faces.
+
+"Serve 'em hot!" roared the same rough voice.
+
+"Stop!"  commanded Tom Reade, leaping forward where the light was
+brightest and into the thick of the struggling mass of humanity.
+
+"Stop, I tell you!"
+
+His commands fell upon deaf ears.  It was impossible to restrain these
+men.
+
+Here and there the lately masked men drew pistols, though not one of
+them had a chance to use his weapon ere it was wrested from him.
+
+Pound! slam! bang!  A medley of falling blows filled the air, nor was it
+many seconds later when cries of pain and fear, and appeals for mercy
+were heard on all sides.
+
+Tom had recognized his own railroad workers, and was throwing himself
+among them, doing his utmost with hands and voice to stop the brief but
+wild orgy of revenge on the part of the workmen who idolized him.  In
+their present rage, however, Tom could not at once restrain them.  Time
+and again he was swept back from reaching Tim Griggs, who was easily the
+center of this volcanic outburst of human passion.
+
+"Boys!" roared Tim.  "We'll want to know these coyotes to-morrow.  Black
+the left eye of each rascal.  I'll black both of Jim Duff's."
+
+Two heavy, sodden impacts sounded during a brief pause in the noise,
+attesting to the fact that the gambler had been decorated.
+
+"Stop all this!  Stop!" roared Tom Reade.  "Men, we're not savages, just
+because these other fellows happen to be!  Stop it, I tell you.  Are
+there no foremen here?"
+
+"I'm trying to reach you, Mr. Reade," called the voice of Superintendent
+Hawkins.  "But this is a heavy crush to get through."
+
+In truth it was.  There were more than a hundred laborers in the cellar,
+while the stairs were blocked by a mob of enraged workmen.
+
+"Stop it all, men!" Tom again urged, and this time there was silence,
+save for his own strong voice.  "We don't want to prove ourselves to be
+as despicable as the enemy are.  Bring 'em up to the street, but don't
+be brutal about it.  We'll look the scoundrels over so that we'll know
+them to-morrow.  Come along.  Clear the stairs, if you please, men!"
+
+Tom was now once more in control, as fully as though he had his force of
+toilers out on the desert at the Man-killer quicksand.
+
+So, after a few minutes, all were in the street.  Here fully two hundred
+more of the railroad men, many of them armed with stakes and other crude
+weapons, held back a crowd of Paloma residents who swarmed curiously
+about.
+
+"Let me through, men.  Let me through, I tell you!" insisted the voice
+of Harry Hazelton, as that young assistant engineer struggled with the
+crowd.
+
+Then, on being recognized, Harry was allowed to reach the side of his
+chum.
+
+"Mr. Reade!" called a husky-toned voice, "won't you order your men to
+let me through to see you?  I want to talk with you about tonight's
+outrage."
+
+Tom recognized the speaker as a man named Beasley, one of Paloma's most
+upright and courageous citizens.
+
+"Let Mr. Beasley through," Tom called.  "Don't block the streets, men.
+Remember, we've no right to do that."
+
+A resounding cheer ascended at the sound of Tom's voice.  In the light
+of the lanterns Tom was seen to be signaling with his hands for quiet,
+and the din soon died down.
+
+"Mr. Reade," spoke Beasley, in a voice that shook with indignation, "the
+real men of this town would like an account of what has been going on
+here to-night.  If Duff and his cronies have been up to anything that
+hurts the good name of the town we'd like the full particulars.  You men
+there--don't let one of the rascals get away.  Jim Duff and his gang
+will have to answer to the town of Paloma."
+
+"Men," ordered Reade, "bring along the crew you caught in the cellar.
+Don't hurt them--remember how cowardly violence would be when we have
+everything in our own hands."
+
+"The men of Paloma will do all the hurting," Mr. Beasley announced
+grimly.
+
+Tom's own deliberate manner, and his manifest intention of not abusing
+his advantage impressed itself upon the decent men of Paloma, who now
+swarmed about the frightened captives from the cellar.
+
+"I know 'em all," muttered Beasley.  "I'll know 'em in the morning, too.
+So will you, friends!" he added, turning to the pressing crowds.
+
+"Start Jim Duff on his travels now!" demanded one angry voice.
+
+"By the Tree & Rope Short Line!" proposed another voice.
+
+Jim was caught and held, despite his straggles.  Active hands swarmed
+over his clothing, seeking for weapons.
+
+"Gentlemen!  Gentlemen!" appealed Tom sturdily, making his resonant
+voice travel far over the heads of the throng.  "Will you honor me with
+your attention for three or four minutes?"
+
+"Yep!" shouted back one voice.
+
+"You bet!" came another voice.
+
+"Go ahead and spout, Reade.  We'll have the hanging, right after!"
+
+There was nothing jovial in these responses.  Tom Reade knew men well
+enough to recognize this fact.  Moreover, Tom knew the plain,
+unvarnished, honest and deadly-in-earnest men of these south-western
+plains well enough to know the genuine fury of the crowd.
+
+Arizona and New Mexico have long been held up as states where violence
+and lynch law prevail.  The truth is that Arizona and New Mexico have no
+more lynchings than do many of the older states.  An Arizona lynching
+can only follow an upheaval of public sentiment, when honest men are
+angered at having their fair fame sullied by the acts of blackguards.
+
+"Friends," Tom went on, as soon as he could secure silence, "I am a
+newcomer among you.  I have no right to tell you how to conduct your
+affairs, and I am not going to make that mistake.  What you may do with
+Jim Duff, what you may do with others who damage the fair name of your
+town, is none of my business.  For myself I want no revenge on these
+rascals.  They have already been handled with much more roughness than
+they had time to show to me.  I am satisfied to call the matter even."
+
+"But we're not!" shouted an Arizona voice from the crowd.
+
+"That's your own affair, gentlemen," Reade went on.  "I wish to suggest
+--in fact, I beg of you--that you let these fellows go to-night.  In the
+morning, when the sun is up, and after you have thought over the matter,
+you will be in a better position to give these fellows fair-minded
+justice--if you then still feel that something must be done to them.
+That is all I have to say, gentlemen. Now, Mr. Beasley, won't you follow
+with further remarks in this same line?"
+
+Mr. Beasley looked more or less reluctant, but he presently complied
+with Reade's request.  Then Tom called upon another prominent citizen of
+Paloma in the crowd for a speech.
+
+"Let the coyotes go--until daylight," was the final verdict of the
+crowd, though there was an ominous note in the expressed decision.
+
+In stony silence the crowd now parted to let Jim Duff and his fellows go
+away.
+
+Within sixty seconds the last of them had run the gauntlet of contempt
+and vanished.
+
+"Someone told me," scoffed Beasley, "that a gambler is a man of courage,
+polish, brains and good manners.  I reckon Jim Duff isn't a real
+gambler, then."
+
+"Yes, he is!" shouted another.  "He's one of the real kind--sometimes
+smooth, but always bound to fatten on the money that belongs to other
+men."
+
+"Jim can leave town, I reckon," grimly declared another old settler.
+"We have savings banks these days, and we don't need gamblers to carry
+our money for us."
+
+"Speech, Reade!  Speech!" insisted Mr. Beasley good-humoredly.
+
+From some mysterious place a barrel was passed along from hand to hand.
+It was set down before the young chief engineer, and ready hands hoisted
+him to the upturned end of the barrel.
+
+"Speech!" roared a thousand voices.
+
+Tom, grinning good-humoredly, then waved his arms as though to still the
+tumult of voices.  Gradually the cheering died down, then ceased.
+
+Bang! sounded further down the Street, and the flash of a rifle was
+seen.
+
+Tom Reade, his speech unmade, fell from the barrel into the arms of
+those crowded about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MR. DANES INTRODUCES HIMSELF
+
+
+Daylight found Jim Duff and some of his cronies of the night before
+either absent from Paloma, or else securely hidden.
+
+Fred Ransom, the Colthwaite Company's representative, had also vanished.
+
+Proprietor Ashby, of the Mansion House, was reported to be skulking in
+his hotel, as he did not show his face on the streets.
+
+Morning also brought calmer counsel to the real men of Paloma.  They
+were now glad that they had not sullied themselves by acts of violence.
+
+No one, when daylight came, entertained the belief that Tom Reade would
+suffer from any further attempts at violence, for now the little coterie
+of so-called "bad men" in the town were thoroughly frightened.
+
+Tom had not been hit by the rifle shot.  He had fallen as a matter of
+precaution, fearing that a second shot would speed on the heels of the
+first.
+
+The fellow who had fired that shot at Tom had not lingered long enough
+to place himself in risk of Arizona vengeance.  Even before some of the
+men in the crowd had had time to discover that Reade, unhurt, was
+laughing over his escape, a score or more had darted down the street,
+only to find that the unknown whom they sought was safely out of the
+way.
+
+"We'll search the town from one end to the other," one excited citizen
+had proposed.
+
+"We'll make a night of it."
+
+"Don't do anything of the sort," Tom had urged.  "You'll terrorize
+hundreds of women and children, who have no knowledge of this affair.
+Jim Duff's little evening of celebration is ended and now the wisest
+thing for you to do is to return to your homes. Mr. Hawkins!"
+
+"Here, sir," answered the superintendent of construction.
+
+"Get our men together and return to camp.  They'll need sleep against
+the toil of to-morrow.  Let every man who wants to do so sleep an hour
+or two later in the morning.  Men of the A., G. & N. M., accept my
+heartiest thanks for the splendid manner in which you turned out to help
+me, though as yet I'm ignorant of how it all came about."
+
+Nor was it until the next day that Tom Reade learned from Hazelton just
+what had caused the laborers to tumble out of their beds and rush into
+town to serve him.
+
+That night Tim Griggs had been prowling about the streets of Paloma,
+suspicious of Reade's enemies, and watching for the safety of the young
+chief engineer who had saved him from the savage appetite of the Man-
+killer quicksand.
+
+It had chanced that Tim had caught a glimpse of the finish of the fight
+on the street, and was just in time to see the young chief engineer
+lifted and carried into that unoccupied house, the property of the hotel
+man, Ashby.
+
+Tim's first instinct had been to seek help in town--in that very
+neighborhood.  Tim was suspicious, and afraid that he might by mistake
+appeal to some of Tom's enemies.
+
+So, while running through the streets searching for Hazelton, Tim had
+espied an automobile standing idle in front of a house.  Having some
+acquaintance with automobiles, Tim had cranked up and leaped into the
+vehicle, speeding straight to camp, where he gave the alarm.  Men
+answered by hundreds, Mendoza keeping his Mexicans in camp to watch the
+property there.
+
+Harry was aroused by the tumult, for he had just gone to his room,
+intending to turn in.
+
+Having roused the camp, Tim ran the car back to town at the head of the
+swarming little army and returned to the spot where he had seized the
+automobile.
+
+"It's all over now, old fellow," Tom declared to his chum cheerily,
+rising from his office chair as one of the whistles blew and the men
+knocked off for their noonday meal.  "What happened last night won't
+happen again."
+
+"Just the same, Tom, I almost wish you'd carry a pistol after this,"
+Harry remarked, as the two engineers went to their horses, mounted and
+started toward town for their own meal.
+
+"Bosh!" almost snapped Tom.  "You know my opinion of pistols.  They are
+for policemen, soldiers and others who have real need to go armed.  Only
+a coward would pack a pistol day by day without needing it."
+
+So the matter was dropped for the time being.
+
+At the hotel Tom and Harry went to their accustomed seats in the dining
+room.  Their food was brought and the two young engineers fell to work
+cheerfully.  Just then a well-dressed man of perhaps thirty years
+entered the dining, room, spoke to one of the waiters, and came over to
+the engineers' table.
+
+"Messrs. Reade and Hazelton?" he inquired pleasantly.
+
+"Yes," Harry nodded.
+
+"May I make myself known?" asked the stranger.  "My name is Danes--Frank
+Danes."
+
+Harry in turn gave his own name and that of Tom.
+
+"I wonder if you would think it intruding if I invited myself to join
+you at this table?" the stranger went on.
+
+"By no means," Tom responded cordially.  "We'll be glad of your company.
+It will stop Hazelton and myself from talking too much shop."
+
+"Oh, by all means talk shop," begged Danes, as he slipped into a chair
+at one side of the table.  "I shall enjoy it, for I am interested in you
+both. In fact, I took the liberty of asking the waiter to point you
+gentlemen out to me."
+
+"So?" Tom inquired.
+
+Danes had the appearance of being a well-to-do easterner, and announced
+himself as a resident of Baltimore.
+
+For some minutes the three chatted pleasantly, Harry, however, doing
+most of the talking for the engineers.  When Tom spoke it was generally
+to put some question.
+
+"Do you ever permit visitors to go out to the Man-killer?" Danes
+inquired toward the end of the meal.
+
+"Sometimes," Tom answered.
+
+"I shall be very grateful if you will accord me that privilege."
+
+"We shall be very glad to invite you out there some time," Tom answered
+pleasantly.
+
+"To-day?" pressed the stranger.  "I have nothing to do this afternoon."
+
+"Some other day would suit better, if you can arrange it conveniently,"
+Reade suggested, as he rose.
+
+Then they left Danes, securing their horses and riding back over the
+scorching desert.
+
+"How do you like Danes?" Harry asked, after they had ridden some
+distance. "He seems a very pleasant fellow."
+
+"Very pleasant," Tom nodded.
+
+"Why didn't you let him come along?"
+
+"Because I don't like Danes' employers."
+
+"His employers?" Harry repeated, puzzled.
+
+"Yes; he is employed by the Colthwaite Company."
+
+"What?" Hazelton started in astonishment.  "How do you know that, Tom?"
+
+"I don't know it, but I'm sure of it, just the same," was Reade's
+answer.
+
+"It maybe so," Harry agreed.  "What makes you suspect him?"
+
+"Well, in the first place, Danes, if that's his name--said he hailed
+from Baltimore.  Yet he had none of that soft, delightful southern
+accent that you and I have noticed in the voices of real southern men.
+Danes uses two or three words, at times, that are distinctly Chicago
+slang.  Moreover, I'm certain that the man knows a good deal about
+engineering work, though he won't admit it."
+
+"We'll have to watch him, then," muttered Harry.
+
+"We don't need to tell him anything, nor do we need to bring him out
+here to see how we are filling in the Man-killer.  If we don't tell
+Danes much he may not last long.  The Colthwaite people ought soon to
+grow tired of keeping agents here who don't succeed in hindering our
+work."
+
+"Whew!  I shall be glad of a sleep to-night, after all the excitement of
+last night," declared Hazelton, as the young engineers rode into Paloma
+at the close of the day's work.
+
+On the porch, lolling in a reclining chair with his feet elevated to the
+railing, sat Frank Danes.
+
+"Back from toil, gentlemen?" was his pleasant greeting.
+
+"Long enough to get sufficient sleep to carry us through to-morrow," was
+Tom Reade's unruffled response.
+
+"You do look tired," assented Danes, rising and coming toward them.
+"Yet I hear that, personally, you don't have hard work to do."
+
+"We don't work at all, if you take that view of it," Harry retorted.
+"Yet there's a thing called responsibility, and many wise men have
+declared that it takes more out of a man than hours of toiling with pick
+and shovel."
+
+"Oh, I can believe that's so," agreed Danes.  "Going into dinner now?"
+
+"After a bath and a change of clothing," Tom replied.
+
+"Then, if you really don't mind, I'll wait and dine at the same table
+with you."
+
+"If you can wait that long we shall be charmed to have your company,"
+Tom assured him as the young engineers stepped inside.
+
+Frank Danes half started as they left him.
+
+"Reade's tone sounded a bit peculiar," muttered the newcomer to himself.
+"I wonder why?  Perhaps I have forced myself a little too much upon him
+and Reade has taken a dislike to me."
+
+If Tom had taken a dislike to the newcomer, Danes could not be sure of
+it from the young chief engineer's manner at table.  Harry Hazelton,
+too, was almost gracious during the meal.
+
+"They're a pair of half-smart, half-simple boobs," decided Danes, as he
+smoked a cigar alone after dinner.
+
+"Tom, I think your great intellect has gone astray for once," remarked
+Hazelton, in the privacy of their room upstairs.
+
+"I never knew that I had any great intellect," Reade laughed.  "However,
+I was born to be suspicious once in a while.  I suppose you were
+referring to Frank Danes."
+
+"Yes; and he appears to be a mighty decent fellow."
+
+"I'm sure I hope he is," yawned Tom.  "I'm willing to give him the
+benefit of the doubt.  I'm going to bed, Harry.  What do you say?"
+
+Hazelton was agreeable.  Within twenty minutes both young engineers were
+sound asleep.
+
+It was after midnight when cries of "fire!" from the street aroused
+them.
+
+Tom Reade threw open the door to be greeted by a cloud of stifling
+smoke.
+
+"Hustle, Harry!" he gasped, making a rush to get into his clothing.  "We
+can get out, I think, but we haven't any time to spare.  This old trap
+is ablaze.  It won't last many minutes!"
+
+Trained in the alarms and the hurries of camp life, the young engineers
+all but sprang into their clothes.
+
+"Come on, Harry!" urged Tom, throwing open the door.  "We can make it."
+
+They started, when, from the floor above, a woman's frantic appeals for
+help reached them.  Children's cries were added to hers.
+
+"Get to the street, Harry!" shouted Tom.  "I'm going upstairs.  There'd
+be no satisfaction for me in reaching the street if I abandoned that
+woman and her babies to their fate.  One of us can do the job as well as
+two!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DANES SHIVERS ON A HOT NIGHT
+
+
+Almost immediately after the cries of "fire" the bell at the fire
+station pealed out.
+
+Paloma's volunteer fire department turned out quickly, running to the
+scene with a hand engine, two hose reels and a ladder truck.
+
+By this time, however, the whole of Paloma appeared to be lighted up
+with the brisk blaze.  Tongues of flame shot skyward from the burning
+hotel, while small blazing embers dropped freely into the street.
+
+"Is everyone out?  Everyone safe?  Anyone missing?" panted Carter, the
+young proprietor of the Cactus House.
+
+The disturbed guests ranged themselves about Carter, who looked them
+over swiftly.
+
+"Where are Mrs. Gerry and her two babies?" demanded the hotel man, his
+cheeks blanching.
+
+None answered, for no one had seen the woman and her children.
+
+"They must be in the house," cried Carter.
+
+At that instant a woman's face appeared, briefly, at a window on the
+third floor.  Her piercing cry rang out, then her face vanished, a cloud
+of smoke driving her from the open window.
+
+"Hustle the ladders along!" begged the hotel man hoarsely.  "We must
+rescue that woman and her children.  Her husband will be here in
+morning.  What can we say to him if we allow his wife and children to
+perish in the flames?"
+
+In a few moments a long ladder had been hauled off the track and brave
+men rushed it to the wall, two men starting to ascend the moment it was
+in place.
+
+In another moment they came sliding down, balked.  Flames had enveloped
+the upper end of the ladder.  It had to be hauled down, buckets of water
+being dashed over the blazing sides.
+
+"You can't get a ladder up on any part of that wall to the third floor,"
+called the chief of the fire department hoarsely, as he broke through a
+thick veil of smoke.  "You'll have to try the rear."
+
+"Where are Reade and Hazelton?" called a voice.
+
+"Reade!"
+
+"Hazelton!"
+
+There was no answer.  A hundred men turned, looking blankly at their
+nearest fellows.
+
+"They've gone down in the flames!" called another voice.
+
+"Reade and Hazelton have lost their lives!"
+
+"That'll make their enemies happy!" groaned one man, and other voices
+took it up.
+
+"Carter," shouted one big man, running to the proprietor, "if this blaze
+is the work of a fire-bug, then look for Reade and Hazelton's enemies.
+They have the most to gain by the death of those young fellows!"
+
+A hoarse yell went up from the crowd.  All of a sudden it seemed plain
+to every man present that the hatred for Tom and Harry in certain
+quarters fully accounted for the fire.
+
+"Get a rope!  Lynch somebody!" shouted one voice after another.
+
+"First of all, let's find a way to get that woman and her babies out!"
+Carter appealed, frantically.
+
+Scores of voices took up this cry, and numbers of men hastened around to
+the rear of the little hotel in the wake of the laddermen.
+
+"We must find Reade and Hazelton, too," shouted others.
+
+"Then we'll lynch someone for this night's business!"
+
+The cry was taken up hoarsely.
+
+Two ladders were quickly hoisted at the rear.  Almost before they had
+begun to hoist, the laddermen and spectators felt that it was a useless
+attempt.
+
+Nor did the doors and passages seem to offer any better avenue of
+escape.
+
+Chug, chug, chug! sounded a touring car close at hand.  An automobile
+stopped, Dr. Furniss jumping out.
+
+"Anyone in danger!" shouted the young doctor.
+
+"Yes; a woman and her children.  Also Reade and Hazelton!"
+
+"It's all right, then," nodded Furniss, looking relieved.  "Tom Reade
+and Harry Hazelton have gone to the aid of the woman."
+
+"If I could only believe that!" gasped Proprietor Carter.  "We've tried
+the ladders, and we've tried the corridors of the house.  It's a raging
+furnace in there."
+
+Dr. Furniss looked on rather calmly.
+
+"I'm merely wondering on which side of the house those two engineers
+will appear with the woman and her children," he declared.
+
+For the fourth time a ladder was being vainly raised at the rear.
+Suddenly a shout rang out.  In the basement a window was unexpectedly
+knocked out from the inside.
+
+Through the way thus cleared leaped a young man so blackened with smoke
+as to be unrecognizable, though it was Hazelton.
+
+Before those who first espied the young man recovered from their
+surprise, a pair of arms from the inside handed out the body of a child
+to Hazelton.
+
+Then came another child.  Next the senseless body of a woman was handed
+out.
+
+Dr. Furniss was the first to recover, from delighted amazement.  In a
+bound he was on the spot, taking care of one of the children himself and
+bawling to others to bring the rest of the family.
+
+Tom Reade, looking more like a burnt-cork minstrel in hard luck than
+like his usual self, sprang through the window way and followed.
+
+"Here, you people--stand back!" roared Tom, elbowing his way along.
+"Dr. Furniss and his patients want room and air.  Stand back!"
+
+"It's Reade!" yelled a dozen men in delight.
+
+"Well, what of it?" asked Tom coolly, as he followed Furniss.  "Was
+there anyone here who expected that I'd be lost?"
+
+"Hurrah!  Where's Hazelton?"
+
+"Who wants me?" demanded the other unrecognizable, smoke-blackened
+figure.
+
+"They're both safe!"
+
+"Oh--cut it out," begged Tom good-humoredly.  "You can't lose an
+engineer or even kill him.  Doc, what's the report?"
+
+"All three are alive," replied Dr. Furniss, "but they'll need care and
+nursing.  Here, help me place them in my car.  Someone get in and ride
+with me--I'll need help.  You, Reade!"
+
+"No," responded Tom with emphasis, as he looked down at his discolored
+self.  "If the lady saw me when she opened her eyes, she'd faint again.
+I'd scare the kiddies into convulsions.  A bath for me!"
+
+A man from the crowd quickly stepped into the tonneau of the car, ready
+to care for the woman and her children while the physician drove his car
+home.
+
+"Hello, Reade!  My congratulations on your getting out.  'Twas a brave
+deed, too, to save that poor woman and her children."
+
+Frank Danes pressed through the crowd about the car, reaching out to
+seize Reade's hand.
+
+Into Tom's face flashed a sudden look that few had ever seen there.
+
+It was a look full of contempt that the young chief engineer bent on the
+man who had greeted him.
+
+"Your hand!" cried Danes, in a voice ringing with admiration.
+
+"Don't you touch me!" warned Reade, his voice vibrating with anger.
+
+"Why--what--" began Danes, then reached his own right hand for Tom's.
+
+"Make way for this 'gentleman' to fall!" roared Reade, then swung a
+crushing blow that landed squarely in Danes's face.
+
+The latter went down in a heap.
+
+There had been no explanation of the seemingly unprovoked blow, but the
+crowd surged forward, snatching Danes's body up as though he were
+something of which these men were anxious to be rid.
+
+"Did he set the hotel afire?" demanded one man in husky tones.
+
+"Did he?" chorused the crowd.
+
+"Lemme through!  Here's a rope!"
+
+Then followed wild sounds that could not be distinguished as words.
+These men of Paloma seemed bent upon fighting for the possession of
+Frank Danes, who, having now recovered his senses, emitted shrill
+appeals for mercy.
+
+"Here's the fire-bug!  Here's the human match!"
+
+"To the nearest tree!"
+
+"I've got the rope ready!"
+
+In another thirty seconds Frank Danes would have been dangling from a
+limb of the nearest tree.  Again Reade and Hazelton sprang into action.
+
+"Stand back, men--please do!" begged Tom, fighting his way through the
+thinnest side of the crowd.  "Don't kill any man without a trial."
+
+"You know that this tenderfoot fired the hotel, don't you?" asked one
+man hoarsely.
+
+"I've reason to suspect that he did--"
+
+"That's enough for us!" roared a hundred voices.
+
+"But I've no positive proof of Danes' guilt," Tom insisted.
+
+"To the tree with him!"
+
+"Not while I've breath left in my body!" Tom blazed forth desperately.
+"Come, Harry!"
+
+Hazelton sprang to his chum's side, the two fighting desperately to
+drive away the men who held Frank Danes captive.
+
+"Wait a few hours at least, men!" Tom appealed earnestly.  "Don't do
+anything now that you'll be sorry for to-morrow."
+
+Other men of calm judgment began to see the force of Reade's remarks.
+
+Tom and Harry were swiftly backed by such reinforcements that the
+trembling wretch was torn from his would-be destroyers.
+
+"Reade," sobbed Frank Danes, "as long as I live I'll never forget your
+splendid conduct."
+
+"Shut up!" retorted Tom roughly.  "I don't want to have to knock you
+down again.  It might start a riot that no man could quell."
+
+"Pass the skulking tenderfoot out to us!" implored some of the men on
+the edge of the crowd, among whom was the man with the spare rope.
+
+"No!  We won't disgrace the town with a lynching," Tom shot back.  "Wait
+until cool judgment has had time to do its work."
+
+"Bear a hand there!" roared Harry.  "Help the firemen to save the next
+building.  Follow me!"
+
+Thus led, the fickle crowd started to the aid of the firemen.
+
+"Come with me, Danes," whispered Tom hoarsely, sternly.  "Keep your
+distance, however, or I shall lay violent hands on you."
+
+Once out of the glare of light cast by the burning of the hotel, Tom
+Reade pointed down a dark side street.
+
+"There's your way, Danes," whispered Reade.  "Skip!  Be far from Paloma
+by daylight--or nothing will save you."
+
+"Do you consider me responsible for that fire?" faltered Danes.
+
+"Hazelton and I went through that fire," Tom retorted sternly.  "We had
+a hard fight to save that woman and her babies, and were nearly choked
+with the fumes of the coal oil with which the fire was kindled.  I
+couldn't swear, in court, Danes, that you started the blaze, but your
+coat and your hands have the odor of coal oil."
+
+Dane's face turned pale, his legs shaking under him.
+
+"So, you see," continued Tom savagely, "you'll do well to escape before
+anyone else notices the smell of coal oil on you."
+
+"You've been mighty good to me--and I--" chattered Danes.
+
+"Shut up, as I advised you before!" rasped Tom Reade.  "I've been as
+good to you as I'd be to a rattlesnake.  Get out of Arizona before the
+men of this town suspect--understand--you?"
+
+"I will," Frank Danes agreed, his teeth chattering.
+
+"Don't ever show your face again in this part of the world."
+
+"I won't, Reade.  Again, my thanks--"
+
+"Shut up!" Tom insisted.  "Thanks from you would make me feel like a
+traitor to the community.  Skip!  Carry word to the Colthwaite Company,
+however, that their latest scheme against us has failed like the
+others!"
+
+At mention of the Colthwaits, Danes turned and fled in earnest.
+
+"That was their second attempt," muttered Tom grimly, as he turned back
+to where the flames still held dominion.  "I wonder if I shall be as
+lucky when the third attempt against me is made?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TIM GRIGGS "GETS HIS"
+
+
+In another hour the spot where the hotel had stood was marked only by a
+shapeless mass of smoking embers.
+
+The citizens of the town went back to their beds.  Mrs. Gerry and her
+children had recovered consciousness and had found a friendly lodging
+for the night.
+
+The rescue performed by Tom and Harry had been a simple enough
+achievement.
+
+Shut off from every other means of escape, they remembered the
+dumbwaiter that ran from the kitchen up to the floors above.
+
+The two little children were sent down on the dumb-waiter, Harry riding
+on the top of the wooden frame.  Mrs. Gerry's rescue was delayed until
+Harry could send the dumb-waiter up to the third floor, where she and
+Tom awaited its return.  Aided by Tom, she descended to the kitchen
+without accident; then Tom followed, sliding down the rope.  It was but
+the work of a moment to break through the basement window and pass the
+woman and her children out to safety.
+
+Morning found Proprietor Carter somewhat resigned to his loss.  True,
+the hotel had been destroyed and the embers must be removed, but both
+building and contents had been fairly well insured.
+
+"I'm a few thousand out," said the hotel man philosophically, "but I
+have my ground yet, and, the insurance money will allow me to rebuild.,
+and put up a more modern hotel.  Of course I'll be a few thousand
+dollars in debt, to start with, but after a short while I'll have earned
+the money that I've lost."
+
+"Why did you smile when poor Carter was talking about his loss?"
+demanded Harry, as the chums strolled away in search of breakfast.
+
+"Did I?" asked Tom, looking suddenly very, sober.
+
+"There was a broad grin on your face?"
+
+"Carter didn't see it, did he?"
+
+"I don't know; but why, the grin, Tom?"
+
+"I'll tell you after I see what answer I receive to a telegram that I've
+sent."
+
+"Tom Reade, you always were provoking!"
+
+"Now I'm doubly so, eh?"
+
+"Oh, well, I don't care," muttered Harry.  "I can wait; I'm not very
+nosey."
+
+By noon General Manager Ellsworth arrived on the scene of the labors of
+the young engineers, out at the site of the big quicksand.
+
+"You can run the work here this afternoon, Harry," Tom declared.  "I
+shall want to put in my time with Mr. Ellsworth."
+
+"Was he the answer to your telegram?"
+
+Tom offered no further information, but hurried away to meet the general
+manager, who had come out to camp in an automobile hired at Paloma.
+Manager and chief engineer now toured slowly toward town, Harry watching
+them as long as they were in sight.
+
+"Tom has something big in the wind," muttered Hazelton.  "It must be
+something about the hotel fire.  What can it be?  At any rate, I'll
+wager it's something that pleases my chum wonderfully."
+
+Nor did Tom return until late in the afternoon.  He came back alone.
+
+"Well?" demanded Harry.
+
+"Yes," nodded Tom.  "It's well."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"The game."
+
+"What is the game?"
+
+"When you hear about it--" Reade began.
+
+"Yes, yes--"
+
+"Then you'll know."
+
+"Tom Reade, do you know, I believe I'm quite ready and willing to thrash
+you?" cried Harry in exasperation.
+
+"Please don't," Tom begged.
+
+"Then tell me what you've been so mightily mysterious about."
+
+"I will," returned Reade.  "I'd have told you hours ago, Harry, only I'm
+afraid you would have been demoralized with disappointment if the thing
+had failed to go through.  Harry, to-day I've been meddling in other
+people's business.  Congratulate me!  I put it through without getting
+myself thumped or even disliked, by anyone.  Both sides to the deal are
+'tickled to death,' as the saying runs."
+
+"You said you were going to tell me," remarked Hazelton, trying hard to
+restrain his curiosity for a minute or two longer.
+
+"Sit down and listen," Tom urged his chum, handing him a chair in their
+little shack of an office.
+
+Then, indeed, Tom did pour forth the whole story.  As Harry listened a
+broad grin of contentment appeared on his face, for one of Hazelton's
+lovable weaknesses was his desire to see other people get ahead.
+
+Just as Tom finished, a figure darkened the doorway.
+
+"I'm ready to go, sir," announced Tim Griggs.
+
+"Go where?" inquired Harry.
+
+"I've fired Griggs," observed Tom Reade.
+
+"What!  After all that he did for you the other night?" demanded
+Hazelton, aghast.  "After the man saved your--"
+
+"Oh, I'm quite satisfied to be fired, Mr. Hazelton," Tim Griggs broke
+in. "In fact, I'm very grateful to Mr. Reade.  He has certainly given me
+a big boost forward in the world."
+
+"What are you going to do now, Griggs?" Harry asked.
+
+"You'd better address him as 'Mr. Griggs,' Harry," Tom hinted.  "He is a
+foreman now, at six dollars a day, and entitled to his Mister."
+
+"Foreman?" Harry repeated, while Gregg's grin broadened.
+
+"Yes," Tom continued.  "Mr. Griggs is to be foreman on the new job that
+I've just been telling you about in town.  After this, if Mr. Griggs is
+careful to behave himself, he's likely always to be a foreman on some
+job or other for the A., G. & N. M."
+
+Harry sprang forward, seizing the hand of Tim Griggs and shaking it with
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Bully old Griggs!  Lucky old Griggs!"  Hazelton bubbled forth.  "Mr.
+Griggs, you'll believe from now on what I've always believed--that it's
+a great piece of luck in itself to be one of Tom Reade's friends."
+
+"It surely has been great luck for me, sir," Griggs answered.  "The best
+part of all," he added, with a husky note in his voice, "is what it
+means to that little girl of mine.  When I get into town to-night I in
+going to sit down and write that little daughter a long letter all about
+the grand news.  She'll be proud of her dad's good luck!  She's only
+eight years old, but she's a great little reader, and she writes me
+letters longer than my own."
+
+"If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Griggs," proposed Tom, "we'll be able to
+give you a ride into town.  The general manager gave me authority to
+rent and use an automobile after this.  It's out there waiting now."
+
+The new foreman gratefully accepted the invitation.  Within five minutes
+the chauffeur had stopped the car in Paloma and Tim Griggs got out to go
+to his new boarding place in the town.
+
+"God bless you, Mr. Reade!" he said huskily, holding out his band.
+"You've done a lot for me--and my little girl!"
+
+"No more than you've done for me," smiled Tom.  "Anyway, you haven't
+received more than you deserve, and you never will in this little old
+world of ours."
+
+"I don't know about that," replied the new foreman, a sudden flush
+rising to his weather-beaten face.  "It all seems too good to be true."
+
+"You'll find it to be true enough when you draw your next pay, Griggs,"
+laughed Tom.  "Then you'll realize that you aren't dreaming.  In the
+meantime your dinner is getting cold at your boarding place.  Don't let
+your new job spoil your appetite."
+
+When Tom and Harry rode into town at noon the following day they beheld
+a scene of great activity at the site of the destroyed Cactus House.
+All the blackened debris had been carted away during the morning by a
+large force of men.  Now, derricks lay in place, to be erected in the
+afternoon.  A steam shovel had been all but installed and a large
+stationary engine rested on nearly completed foundations.
+
+George Ashby, proprietor of the Mansion House, who had dared, during the
+last two days, to show himself a little more openly on the streets of
+Paloma, halted just as Tom and Harry stepped out of the automobile to
+look over the scene of Foreman Griggs's morning labors.
+
+"Looks as if the Cactus House might be rebuilt," remarked Ashby, burning
+with curiosity.
+
+"No," said Tom briefly.
+
+"Carter is going to change the name?" inquired Ashby.
+
+"No.  Carter doesn't own this land any more."
+
+"He doesn't own the land?" Ashby asked.  "What's going to be put up
+here, then?  A business block?"
+
+For a moment Ashby thrilled with joy.  Of late the Cactus House had
+seriously cut in on the profits of the Mansion House.  Ashby had, in
+fact, been running behind.  Now, if the Mansion House were to be
+henceforth the only hotel in town, Ashby saw a chance to prosper on a
+more than comfortable scale.
+
+"Ashby,"  Tom went on, rather frigidly, "I won't waste many words, for
+I'm afraid I don't like you well enough to talk very much to you.  The
+A., G. & N. M. has bought this land from Mr. Carter.  The railroad is
+going to erect here one of the finest hotels in this part of Arizona.
+It will have every modern convenience, and will make your hotel look
+like a mill boarding house by contrast.  When the new hotel is completed
+it will be leased to Mr. Carter.  With his insurance money, and the
+price of the land in bank, Carter will have capital for embarking in the
+hotel business on a scale that will make this end of Arizona sit up and
+do some hard looking."
+
+As he listened Proprietor Ashby's jaw dropped.  His color came and went.
+He swallowed hard, while his hands worked convulsively.  With the fine
+new hotel that was coming to Paloma the owner of the Mansion House saw
+himself driven hopelessly into the background.  "Reade, this new hotel
+game is some of your doings," growled the hotel man.
+
+"I'm proud to say that it is partly my doing," Tom admitted, with a
+smile. "Harry, let's go along to the restaurant.  I'm hungry."
+
+As the two young engineers stepped into the car and were driven away,
+Ashby dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands.
+
+"So I'm to be beaten out of the hotel game here, am I!" the hotel man
+asked himself, gritting his teeth.  "I'm to be driven out by Reade, the
+fellow whom I once kicked out of my hotel!  Oh--well, all right!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+TRAGEDY CAPS THE TEST
+
+
+"Pass the signal!" directed Tom.
+
+A railroad man with a flag made several swift moves.  Down the track an
+engineman, in his cab, answered with a short blast of, the whistle.
+Then he threw over the lever, and a train of ten flat cars started along
+in the engine's wake.
+
+It was the first test--the "small test," Tom called it--of the track
+that now extended across the surface of the Man-killer.
+
+On each flat car were piled ten tons of steel rails, to be used further
+along in the construction work.  With engine, cars and all, the load
+amounted to one hundred and fifty tons, the pressure of which would be
+exerted over a comparatively short strip of the new track that now
+glistened over the Man-killer.
+
+Mounted on his pony, Harry Hazelton had galloped a considerable distance
+down the track.  Now, halted, he had turned his pony's head about,
+watching eagerly the on-coming train.
+
+For two weeks the laborers had been working on the roadbed now running
+over the Man-killer.  Ties had been laid and rails fastened down.
+Apparently the Man-killer had done its worst and had been balked, a
+seemingly secure roadbed now resting on the once treacherous quicksand.
+
+Construction trains, short and lightly laden, had been moving out over
+the newly filled in soil for many days, but the train now starting at
+the edge of the terrible Man-killer was heavier than any equipment that
+had before been run over the ground.
+
+The president of the A., G. & N. M. R. R. was there, flanked by half a
+dozen of the leading directors of the road.  There were other officials
+there, including General Manager Ellsworth.
+
+"I see Hazelton out yonder," murmured the president of the road.  "But
+where's that young man Reade, now at the moment when the success of his
+work is being tested?"
+
+"Goodness knows," rejoined Mr. Ellsworth.  "As likely as not he's back
+in the office, taking a nap after having given the engineman his
+signal."
+
+"Asleep!" repeated the president.  "Can he be so indolent or so
+indifferent as that?"
+
+"You may always depend upon Tom Reade to do something that wouldn't be
+expected of him," laughed Mr. Ellsworth.  "It isn't that he slights big
+duties, or even pretends to do.  If he has vanished, and has gone to
+sleep, then it is because he feels so sure of his work that he takes no
+further interest in the test that is being made."
+
+"But if an accident should happen?" asked the president of the A. G. &
+N. M. R. R.
+
+"Then I can promise you that you'd see Reade, on his pony, shooting
+ahead as fast as he could go to the scene of the trouble."
+
+These more important railroad officials had come out to camp in
+automobiles.  Now they followed on foot as the train rolled on to the
+land reclaimed from the Man-killer.
+
+Superintendent Hawkins and his foremen also went along on foot to
+observe whether the track sank ever so little at any point.
+
+It was none of Harry Hazelton's particular business to watch whether the
+tracks sank slightly.  That duty could be better performed by the
+foremen who had had charge of the track laying.  Yet Hazelton, as he
+watched, found himself growing impatient.
+
+"Here!" Harry called to a near-by laborer.  "Take my horse, please."
+
+In another instant the young assistant engineer was on foot, following
+the slowly moving train as it rolled along over the ground where, months
+before, not even a man could have strolled with safety.
+
+"Do you see any sagging of the track, Mr. Rivers?" Harry called.
+
+"No, sir.  Not as much as a sixteenth of an inch at any point,"
+responded the foreman.  "The job has been a big success."
+
+"We can tell that better after the track has held loads of from five to
+eight hundred tons," Harry rejoined.  "I believe, however, that we have
+the tricks of the savage old Man-killer nailed."
+
+Exultation throbbed in Harry's heart.  Outwardly, he did not trust
+himself to reveal his great delight.  He still followed, watching
+anxiously, until the train had passed safely over the Man-killer.
+
+Then a great cheer went up from more than a thousand throats, for many
+people had come out from Paloma to watch the test.
+
+The train had gone a quarter of a mile past the western edge of the huge
+and once treacherous quicksand.  Now the engine was on a temporary turn-
+table, waiting to be turned and switched back to bring the train back
+over the Man-killer at a swift gait.
+
+"Where's Mr. Reade?" called the president of the road, gazing backward.
+"Someone go for him.  I wish him to be here to see the test made with
+the train under fast speed."
+
+"I'll get Reade, sir," answered Harry, motioning to have his pony
+brought to him.
+
+Hazelton vanished in a cloud of desert dust.
+
+When he next appeared there was another pony, and Reade astride it.
+
+"You sent for me, sir," said Tom, riding close to the president, then
+dismounting.
+
+"Yes," Mr. Reade.  "I believed that you should be here to see the test
+train return."
+
+"Very good, sir," was Tom's quiet reply.  He signaled for a workman to
+come and take charge of his pony.
+
+In a few minutes the short but heavy train started, gaining headway
+rapidly.  By the time it struck the edge of the possibly conquered
+quicksand it was moving at the rate of forty miles an hour.
+
+Across the Man-killer the train continued for a mile in the direction of
+Paloma.
+
+"Now, let us all inspect the track," suggested the president of the
+railroad company.  "Call up the autos."
+
+"Will you let me make a suggestion, sir!" queried Tom.
+
+"Go ahead, Mr. Reade."
+
+"Then, sir, let Mr. Hazelton and myself ride out along the track first,
+that we may see if the whole course is safe."
+
+"That heavy train just went over at fast speed and nothing disastrous
+happened," protested the president.
+
+"Probably the entire course is still safe, sir?" Tom assented.  "Yet, on
+the other hand, it is possible that the fast moving train may have
+started the quicksand at some point.  The next object that passes over,
+even if no heavier than an automobile, may meet with disaster.  Mr.
+Hazelton and I can soon satisfy ourselves as to whether the roadbed has
+sagged at any point along the way.  We shall ride nothing heavier than
+mustangs."
+
+"There is something in what you say, Mr. Reade.  Go ahead.  We will wait
+until we have your report."
+
+Tom and Harry accordingly mounted, riding off at a trot.  Yet at some
+sections of the line they rode so slowly, studying the ground
+attentively, that it was fully half an hour before they had crossed the
+further edge of the Man-killer.
+
+"The engineers are signaling us, Mr. President," reported General
+Manager Ellsworth.  "They are motioning us to go forward."
+
+Accordingly the party of railway officials entered their automobiles and
+started slowly off over the Man-killer.
+
+"Ride back and meet them, Harry," Tom suggested.  "Show them that one
+point that we noticed."
+
+Hazelton accordingly dug his heels into the flank of his pony, starting
+off at a gallop.
+
+Two or three minutes passed.  Then Mr. Ellsworth leaped from his seat in
+the foremost automobile, standing erect in the car and pointing
+excitedly.
+
+"Look there!" he shouted lustily.  "What's happening?"
+
+Away off, at the further side of the Man-killer, a horseman had suddenly
+ridden into sight from behind a sand pile.  His swiftly moving pony had
+gotten within three hundred yards of the chief engineer before Tom
+looked up to behold the newcomer.
+
+From where the railroad officials watched they could hear nothing,
+though they saw a succession of indistinct spittings from something in
+the right hand of the horseman.
+
+"It's a revolver the fellow's shooting at Mr. Reade!" gasped
+Superintendent Hawkins, leaping into the car beside the general manager.
+"Turn your speed on, man--make a lightning lash across the Man-killer!"
+
+Away shot the automobile, not wholly to the liking of two eastern men
+who sat in the directors' car.
+
+Tom Reade had realized his danger.  Having nothing with which to fight,
+Reade had sprung his horse eastward and was racing for life.
+
+The unknown had emptied his weapon, but that did not deter him, for,
+continuing his wild pursuit, the stranger could be seen to draw another
+automatic revolver.
+
+The bullets striking all about Tom's pony ploughed up the sand.
+
+Within a minute the men in the speeding automobile were close enough to
+hear the sputtering crackle of the pistol shots.
+
+"There goes Hazelton right into the face of death!" gasped Mr.
+Ellsworth, who remained in a standing position.  "Foolish of the boy,
+but magnificent!"
+
+Harry had turned some time before, but now those in the automobile saw
+that Hazelton was riding squarely to Tom's side, despite the constant
+fusillade of bullets.
+
+Both pistols were now emptied, but the pursuer, letting his reins fall
+on the neck of his madly galloping pony, was inserting fresh cartridges
+in the magazine chambers of his pistols.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SECRET OF ASHBY'S CUNNING
+
+
+At a considerable distance behind the automobile came another rescue
+party. This was made up of about two score of Arizona horsemen.  Many of
+these men were armed.  At the saddle bows of some of the hung raw-hide
+lariats that the owners unwound as they sped forward.
+
+Tom Reade, with the pursuer slowly, but steadily gaining upon him, had
+discovered the identity of the man who seemed bent on his destruction.
+
+As Hazelton drew nearer Tom waved his left hand frantically at his chum.
+
+"Turn about, Harry!  Ride back like the wind!" shouted Tom.  "It's
+Ashby, and he's shooting to kill.  About face--you young idiot!"
+
+Harry took no notice of the warning, reining in only slightly, then
+wheeling and riding in a line with Reade, though about forty feet to one
+side of him.
+
+Ashby, a wild light in his eyes, heavily armed, and riding madly, kept
+up a continuous fire in his effort to destroy the young chief engineer.
+
+Honk! Honk! honk! came the warning from the automobile horn.  The car
+dashed at full speed toward the vengeful rider, as though about to run
+him down.
+
+George Ashby, however, was not easily intimidated.  One swift glance had
+assured him that the automobile bore no armed men.  He therefore merely
+swung his horse out of the path of the on-coming car and continued to
+aim at Reade, though he now took more time between shots.  On Hazelton
+he did not waste a shot.
+
+Helplessly and vainly the automobile whizzed by pursuer and pursued.
+
+"Ashby, stop this madness!" cried Mr. Ellsworth hoarsely.
+
+The pursuing rider never faltered.  Now the party of Arizona horsemen
+were riding nearer.  Two or three of the leaders drew revolvers, opening
+fire on the mad hotel man, though the range was as yet too great for
+effective work.
+
+In another thirty seconds George Ashby would doubtless have dropped to
+the dust of the dessert, riddled with lead.  Suddenly, however, he gave
+his horse's head a sharp turn to the right.  In an instant he was riding
+back, shooting no more, and Tom Reade had passed safely out of range.
+
+With wild whoops the Paloma horsemen dashed on.  Their mounts were not
+spent as was that of the hotel man.
+
+"Don't shoot the fellow, if you can help it!" Tom Reade had called, as
+the horsemen swept by him.  "Rope Ashby if you can."
+
+Suddenly the hotel man's mount was seen to stagger slightly.  It was
+sufficient to pitch Ashby, who was not on his guard.
+
+With wilder whoops the Arizona men spurred their ponies on.  There was a
+whirring of lariats and no less than three nooses had fallen over the
+hotel man's head.
+
+There came a brief interval in which the men, swooping down on the
+captive, concealed him from the view of others.
+
+Out of this crush soon came order.  Then it was seen that Ashby had been
+roped securely and was being led back to the railroad camp.
+
+"We've got the scoundrel, with four ropes hitched to him," called one of
+the captors.
+
+"One rope will be enough as soon as we can find a tree."
+
+The party was riding into the railroad camp now, and a dense crowd
+pressed forward to see the face of the keeper of the Mansion House.
+
+Ashby was chuckling gleefully.  If any fear of the consequences of his
+lawless behavior oppressed him, he was far from betraying the fact.
+
+"Be gentle with him, friends," Tom urged, riding forward.
+
+"Yes; we ought to be gentle with every rattlesnake," came an answer from
+the crowd.
+
+Ashby laughed harshly.
+
+"You can't hurt me, neighbors," declared the hotel man.  "I'm bullet
+proof. Any man who fires at me will find that the bullet will rebound
+and bit him. Tie me up to a tree, if you like.  You'll find that I won't
+choke.  I'll just slide back to earth as often as you tie me up."
+
+"Just what I thought," murmured Tom.
+
+"What do you think?" demanded Mr. Ellsworth from the car.
+
+"The man's as mad as a March hare," replied Reade.
+
+"Humph!  He's merely shamming," retorted the general manager.
+
+"Stow the funny business, Ashby!" came the advice from the crowd.  "You
+can't fool us into believing that you're crazy."
+
+"Crazy?" repeated the hotel man, a look of amazement creeping into his
+face.  "Of course I'm not crazy.  I'm the only sane man in this crowd."
+
+Men began to look wonderingly at the hotel man, though many still
+believed that Ashby was cleverly shamming insanity in order to save his
+neck from being stretched.
+
+"Doe Furniss!  Come over here!" called Reade.  "Gentlemen, this is a
+question for Doe Furniss.  Don't think of doing anything to the fellow
+until you've heard from Doc.  Make way for the doctor, gentlemen."
+
+At a sign from Dr. Furniss the captors led Ashby's horse onward until
+the office shack was reached.  Here two men freed the captive from his
+horse and led him inside.  Dr. Furniss followed them and the door was
+closed.
+
+"Let's get away from here," urged Tom Reade.  "A big crowd hanging about
+is sure to excite the poor fellow."
+
+"Reade, you're too soft and easy," grunted a Paloma man in the crowd.
+"The only thing that makes Ashby crazy is that he didn't get you."
+
+"He did 'get' me, however," laughed Tom, displaying four bullet holes
+through his shirtsleeves, and two more that pierced his hat.  "Ashby got
+as much of me as I'd want any marksman to get."
+
+Having withdrawn to a distance, the crowd waited.
+
+It was nearly half an hour before Dr. Furniss stepped outside.  Now he
+walked swiftly over to the edge of the crowd.
+
+"Gentlemen," remarked the physician, "you are justified in feeling very
+well pleased that you didn't lynch Ashby.  The poor fellow is as insane
+as a man could well be.  He imagines Mr. Reade has hurt his business and
+is determined to kill him.  I'll send for a straightjacket and then
+we'll hustle him away to the asylum."
+
+At this moment a wild yell sounded from the shack, to be echoed from the
+crowd.   George Ashby, seemingly possessed of the strength of half a
+dozen men, had wrenched himself free of his captors, felling both like a
+flash. Then the hotel man leaped to his horse, freeing it and starting
+off at a mad gallop.
+
+Instantly a score of men set off after the fugitive, swinging their
+lariats as they rode.
+
+Crack! Crack! Bang!
+
+Snatching still another automatic revolver from one of his saddle bags,
+Ashby was now firing at those riding behind him.
+
+The line of horsemen wavered somewhat.  They might have fired in return,
+and have brought down their quarry, but no brave man likes to think of
+shooting a lunatic.
+
+So, still firing as he went, Ashby once more reached the edge of the
+quicksand.
+
+Now, riding as fast as he could urge his pony, the hotel man dashed out
+on the Man-killer.
+
+Nor was he riding over the part that had been rendered safe by the young
+engineers.
+
+Instead, he was riding to the southward of the railroad property--
+straight out where he was likely to find a speedy death in the engulfing
+sands.
+
+"Stop, Ashby!  Come back!" shouted a dozen voices.  "You'll be swallowed
+up in the quick-sands."
+
+Brave as they were, the pursuers now rein up sharply.  It seemed to them
+sheer madness to ride out thus to their certain deaths.
+
+"Ashby is crazy, all right," remarked bronzed man.  "None but an insane
+man would ride out there."
+
+Somewhat tardily automobile parties started in pursuit.  These vehicles
+were halted at the edge of the quicksand.  Tom and Harry had also come
+this far.
+
+In the background the halted crowd watched in suspense as George Ashby
+galloped over the treacherous sand.
+
+Several times the pony's hoofs were seen to sink, yet each time the
+animal seemed able to draw his feet out of the sand and go on again.
+
+"It's a crazy man's luck," cried an Arizona man thickly.  "Of course,
+here and there on the Man-killer there are safe, sound spots, and Ashby
+is having the luck of his life in hitting all the sound spots in getting
+across.  But I wouldn't follow him for a thousand dollars a minute!"
+
+The mad hotel man was soon lost to view on the other side of one of the
+little hills of sand.
+
+There would have been little sense in trying to follow him or to head
+him off, even by more roundabout courses.  Ashby was now far enough away
+to elude any pursuit that might start.
+
+"I wonder if Reade has any idea of what he's up against now?" murmured
+the mayor of Paloma.  "That crazy man is loose, and sooner or later
+he'll be heard from again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+DUFF PROMISES THE "SQUARE DEAL"
+
+
+Altogether the day had been a hugely satisfactory one to the young chief
+engineer.
+
+The first test had been made, and, all had passed off well, for, in Tom
+Reade's easy-going, fearless mind the peculiar doings of George Ashby
+did not figure at all as a part of the day's work.
+
+"Harry, we've every reason to feel proud of ourselves" mused Tom aloud,
+as he undressed in the shack that night.
+
+"You feel pretty certain that we've conquered the Man-killer, do you?"
+Hazelton asked, as he laid down the book he had been reading.
+
+Of late, since the burning of the Cactus House, the chums had slept in
+the shack, though still getting many of their meals in town.
+
+"Oh, of course you know that we haven't won, the whole fight yet," Reade
+went on.  "We've plenty of work to do here still before we pronounce the
+job finished.  But to-day's shows that our plan for filling in this
+particular, kind of quicksand was a sound one.  You know the president
+of the road said that words failed to express his complete approbation
+of our work."
+
+"We certainly have been remarkably fortunate--so far," Harry admitted.
+"Yet I must confess, Tom, that I'm still nervous."
+
+"Then it must be over Ashby," Tom laughed.
+
+"Ashby be hanged!" Hazelton retorted.  "I haven't given him a thought
+this evening.  No, I'm still nervous about our job here.  The first test
+was all right--that is, it was all right to-day.  But these quicksands
+are treacherous.  Our roadbed may be all right for a fortnight, and may
+seem as safe as we could wish it to be.  Then, all of a sudden, within
+sixty seconds, it may sink before our very eyes.  Suppose it were to
+sink while a trainload of human beings was passing over it!"
+
+"You might as well dismiss all such thoughts," Reade counseled.  "I tell
+you, Harry, we've proved that our principle is sound.  Now, we will go
+ahead and finish the job.  When we go away from here I, for one, shall
+feel certain that the Man-killer must behave for all time to come.
+Harry, there's a limit to the shifting tendency of a quicksand, and
+to-day's test proves to me that we've found it.  We've won.  I wish I were
+as sure of a dozen other things as I am that we've won out here to-day."
+
+"All right, then," smiled Hazelton.  "You're a smarter engineer than I
+am, Tom, old fellow.  If you're satisfied, then I'm bound to be, for
+I'll back your judgment in engineering against my own."
+
+"That's rather more praise, Harry, than I expect or wish," Reade
+rejoined soberly.  "But I don't see how the Man-killer can ever again
+assert himself against the A. G. & N. M.'s roadbed."
+
+"Oh, I'm only an old croaker, I know," Harry confessed.  "I've got a
+blue streak on to-night.  Or else it's a fit of apprehension about
+something or other.  I feel as if--"
+
+Crack! crack!
+
+Outside two shots rang suddenly out, to be followed by a dozen swift,
+scattering reports.
+
+"Mr. Reade!  They--" began a voice outside, then stopped abruptly.
+
+Tom hustled on his clothing again with a speed that seemed to partake of
+magic.  Then, with Harry close upon his heels, he rushed to the door,
+jerking it open.
+
+"Just the pair we want!" snarled a voice that proceeded from behind a
+mask.
+
+A dozen masked men pressed into the room.  Tom and Harry put their fists
+into instant action, but it availed them nothing.
+
+In a twinkling they were borne to the floor.  At lightning speed both
+were rolled over and bound.
+
+From the tents of the laborers, beyond hoarse voices sounded as the men
+were awakened by the shots.
+
+"Get back there, you idiots!" commanded a voice outside.  "If you don't,
+you'll think that a Gatling gun factory has blown up about your ears."
+
+Reports rang out sharply as a dozen revolver shots were fired into the
+air.
+
+Now, dazed with the suddenness of the attack, Reade and Hazelton were
+dragged into the open.
+
+Their two night watchmen, who had gone down bravely, now lay wounded on
+the ground, their weapons snatched from them.
+
+"Hoist 'em along, boys," ordered a gruff voice.
+
+Tom and Harry were carried on the shoulders of men, and moved along at a
+swift pace.  Only half a dozen of the raiders needed to remain somewhat
+in the rear, firing an occasional shot to prevent the unarmed laborers
+from swarming to the attack.
+
+"Hoist 'em up!  Tie 'em on!  Get under way quick!  There'll be a big
+noise raised after us soon," declared the same directing voice.
+
+Tom and Harry were fairly thrown upon the backs of horses, and there
+lashed fast.
+
+"Mount and get away," ordered the commander of this strangest of night
+raids.
+
+Two men, each leading a pony to which a captive was lashed, rode off in
+one direction.  Groups of two or three rode away in other directions,
+the blackness of the night swallowing them up.
+
+It was going to be a difficult task for pursuers to know which direction
+to take in order to come up with Reade and Hazelton in time to save them
+from the fate that lay just ahead of them!
+
+For audacity and dash the raid could not have been better planned.
+
+From camp not a shot was fired, for the watchmen had had the only
+weapons and these had been seized by the invaders.
+
+"Our foremen might telegraph to camp," thought Tom swiftly, as he felt
+himself being carried away.  "But I'll wager that these smart scoundrels
+didn't forget to cut the wire before springing the raid."
+
+For the first two or three minutes Harry's, slower moving mind hardly
+grasped more than the fact that their enemies appeared to have won a
+complete triumph.
+
+"There isn't much doubt as to what they'll do with us," thought
+Hazelton, with a slight shudder.  "These rascals will move too fast for
+pursuit to overtake them early.  What they in intend to do with us can
+be done in a very few minutes."
+
+Neither young engineer really expected to live to see daylight.  From
+the first, after having incurred the anger of a certain lawless element
+in Paloma, the young engineers had understood fully that threats of
+lynching them had not been idly made.
+
+"There'll be a stir, though," Tom Reade muttered to himself.  "The A. G.
+& N. M. officials won't let this crime go by without a determined effort
+to bring the offenders to justice.  Detectives will search this
+community in squads, and everyone of these masked gentlemen is likely to
+get his deserts."
+
+Within the next half hour the galloping horses had covered fully five
+miles.  Now the leader of the crowd led the way down into a deep gully
+in the sand.
+
+"Hold up, men," ordered the leader, and the cavalcade came to a stop,
+horses panting.
+
+"Tumble the cattle off into the dirt," was the next order, and it was
+obeyed, Tom and Harry rolling in the bitter alkali dust.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, I believe I will take command," spoke one of the party
+of horsemen, in his most suave voice, as he removed his mask.  The
+speaker, as Reade knew at once, was Jim Duff, the gambler.
+
+"That's all right, Jim," nodded the former leader.
+
+"Jake, ride back a few hundred yards and keep a sharp lookout,"
+suggested Duff blandly.  "The pursuers may come in automobiles.  We'll
+cut the ceremonies here short and leave nothing but lifeless bodies for
+the rescue parties to find."
+
+Stakes were driven and the horses picketed.
+
+"Bring along our guests," suggested Jim Duff, with a touch of humor
+that the occasion rendered grisly.
+
+Thereupon Tom and Harry were once more jerked to their feet.
+
+"Ye can walk, I reckon, and don't have be toted," observed one of the
+scoundrels.
+
+"We're wholly at your service, sir," rejoined Tom mockingly.
+
+"And equally at your pleasure," Harry suggested dryly.
+
+Two hundred yards further on the halted close to a pair of stunted trees
+of about the same size.
+
+"Gentlemen, you may as well remove your masks on this hot evening,"
+suggested Jim Duff.  The face coverings came off.  Reade and Hazelton
+surveyed their captors as the chance offered, being careful not to
+betray too great curiosity.
+
+"I see one gentleman here whom I had expected to find," remarked Tom
+quietly.
+
+"Me?" hinted Duff.
+
+"Well, yes; you, for one, but I refer to that excellent host, Mr. Ashby,
+of the Mansion House."
+
+With a start George Ashby turned on Reade, coming closer and grinning
+ferociously into the face of the young chief engineer.  Tom, however,
+managed to muster a smile as he went on:
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Ashby?  Your performance of this afternoon mystified
+me a good deal.  I had never expected to find myself on a shooting
+acquaintance with you."
+
+Three or four of the rascals chuckled at this way of putting it, but
+Proprietor Ashby snarled like a wild animal.
+
+"As for you, Mr. Duff," Reade resumed, "I confess that I have never been
+able to understand you."
+
+"You will to-night," smiled Duff, with bland ferocity.  "I can promise
+you, as a gambler, that I am going to give you a square deal."
+
+"Fine!" glowed Tom.  "I am delighted to hear that you have reformed,
+then."
+
+This' time there was a general laugh.  Jim Duff flushed angrily.
+
+"Reade, what you never understood about me is that I belong to the ranks
+of the square gamblers."
+
+"I didn't believe there were any such gamblers," Tom replied in a voice
+of surprise.  "It is still hard for me to believe.  How can any man be
+square and honorable when he won't work, but fattens on the earnings of
+others? Has that idea any connection with honor?"
+
+"Stop that line of talk, you young hound!" ordered Duff, striding up to
+this bold young enemy.  All the slight veneer of polish that Duff
+usually affected had vanished now.  His eyes blazed with rage as he
+doubled his fist and struck Reade full in the face, knocking him down.
+One of the bystanders jerked Tom to his feet.
+
+"Speaking of the square deal," Tom observed, "I now insist upon it.
+Duff, you knocked me down when my hands were tied.  If you're not a
+coward I request that you order my hands freed--and then repeat your
+blow if you dare."
+
+"You'll stay tied," retorted Duff grimly.
+
+"I knew it," sighed Reade.  "What's the use of talking about honor and
+square dealing where a gambler is concerned?  Loaded dice, marked cards
+or tying a man before you dare to hit him--it's all the same to your
+kind."
+
+"Shut up that talk, you hound, or I'll pound you stiff before we go on
+with what's been arranged for you!" raged the gambler, shaking his
+clenched fist in the face of the young engineer.
+
+"Go slowly, Jim," advised one of the men present.  "Of course we know
+what we're to do to this young pup, and we all know what he thinks of
+you.  But some of the rest of us have different ideas as to how a
+helpless enemy ought to be treated."
+
+"You, Rafe Bodson!" snarled Duff, turning on the last speaker.  "Are you
+one of us?  Do you belong to our side, or are you a spy for the other
+crowd?"
+
+"Got your gun with you, Duff?" inquired Bodson calmly.
+
+"Yes," snapped the gambler.
+
+"Get it out in your hand, then, before, you talk to me any more in that
+fashion."
+
+"He won't," mocked Tom.  "He doesn't dare, Bodson.  Your hands are not
+tied."
+
+"Cut it out, Rafe!  Quit it!" ordered one of the other men in the crowd.
+"We won't let this tenderfoot split our ranks.  You're one of us, and
+you'll stand by us."
+
+"Not if there's going to be any more hitting of tied men," retorted
+Bodson sulkily.  "There's a limit to what a man can stand."
+
+"Thank you, my friend," broke in Tom Reade mildly.  "But don't go to any
+trouble on our account.  There are few if any others in this crowd who
+can understand the meaning of fair play--the gambler least of all."
+
+"I'll take that out of you, Reade!" blazed Jim Duff. "I'll--"
+
+"You'll do nothing while the kid's hands are tied," objected Bodson,
+stepping between the pair.  "Act fair and square, Jim, as a man should
+act."
+
+"That's the argument, Rafe," remarked another man, also stepping
+forward.
+
+"Bully for you, Jeff Moore," replied Rafe.  "Now, remember, friends,
+we're not calling for anything except that Jim Duff live up to the
+program he just published for himself--the square deal."
+
+Several murmurs of protest came from the other raiders.
+
+"I reckon, Rafe, you and Jeff had better step back and let the rest of
+us handle this thing," advised one of the party.  "The pair of you are
+too chicken-livered for us."
+
+"It's a lie, as anyone in Paloma knows," Rafe retorted coolly.  "No--put
+up your shooters," as the hands of five or six men slid to their belts.
+"There's no need of bad blood between us.  All I ask is for Jim Duff to
+step back out of this."
+
+"Am I the leader here or am I not?" demanded Duff boldly.  "Wasn't it my
+interests that were first assailed by these fresh tenderfeet!  Didn't
+you gentlemen come out  to-night, to help me attend to my affair?
+Didn't you turn also to avenge the blow that has been dealt these cubs
+to poor George Ashby's prosperity?"
+
+At hearing himself so sympathetically referred to, Ashby threw himself
+forward, a short, double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
+
+"Yes, you, get back, you white-livered cowards!" commanded Ashby
+hoarsely. "You let Duff and myself and the rest of us here handle these
+young hounds as they deserve to be treated.  You, Rafe and Jeff, get out
+of this. You've no business here.  You belong to the enemies of business
+interests in Paloma.  The rest of us will settle with these business
+destroyers."
+
+Ashby's eyes glowed with the unbridled fury of the lunatic.  Yet Rafe
+Bodson did not waver.
+
+"Gentlemen," he demanded coldly, "for what purpose did you bring these
+young fellows out here?"
+
+"To lynch 'em!" came the hoarse murmur.
+
+"Then go ahead and do it, like men," ordered Bodson.  "There are the
+trees. You have your ropes, and your men are ready.  Remember, no
+cowardly treatment of young fellows whose hands are tied.  Go on with
+the lynching and get it over with!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A SPECIALIST IN "HONOR"
+
+
+"Sir!  Stop it, I tell you," quivered Duff, again stepping to the front.
+"These young hounds shan't die until I've made them apologize for every
+insulting word they've said to me."
+
+"Fine!" glowed Tom with enthusiasm.
+
+"Great!"
+
+"What ails you now, Reade?" demanded Duff, his face again darkening.
+
+"You've just promised us that we shall live forever," returned Tom
+dryly.
+
+Then he added, with a sigh:
+
+"But I suppose that's only another lie--another specimen of a gambler's
+honor."
+
+"Stand aside, Bodson!  Moore, you get out of the way!" snarled the
+gambler, his anger again depriving him of all reason.  "I'll have my way
+with these young hounds before we string 'em up."
+
+"Let me at 'em!" implored Ashby, fingering his shotgun nervously.  "Get
+out of my way.  I don't want to pepper anyone else."
+
+But Bodson and Moore, bad as they were some respects, stood their
+ground.
+
+"Are you going to let us at them?" insisted Duff, his voice now broken
+and harsh from anger.
+
+"Not for the purpose of bullying them!" insisted Rafe, without moving.
+"Jeff, you're with me, aren't you?"
+
+"Right by your side, pardner."
+
+"Come on, then, boys!" called Duff, the note of rally in his tone.
+"Help me to drive this pair of traitors out of your company."
+
+Like a flash Bodson's revolver was in his band.  The muzzle covered the
+gambler.
+
+"Jim Duff, down on your knees before I blow your bead off!"
+
+The gambler started back, his face paling.
+
+In the same instant Jeff Moore had also drawn his revolver, and held it
+ready for the first hostile sign from anyone in the group.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Rafe?" demanded the gambler, in a half-
+coaxing tone.
+
+"Nothing," Bodson assured him calmly, "except that I'm going to blow
+your head off if you aren't down on your knees before I've counted
+three! One--two--th--"
+
+Duff dropped to his knees, holding his hands high in air.
+
+"Now apologize for calling us traitors," admonished Rafe.  "Do it
+handsomely, too, while you're about it."
+
+"Rafe," protested Jim Duff, "you, know that I said what I did only
+because I was angry.  I know you're a gentleman, and you know that I
+know it.  If I've hurt your feelings, I'm sorry, a thousand times over."
+
+"Jim, you're a good deal of a sneak, aren't you?" inquired Rafe, in a
+voice that sounded pleasant enough, but which carried a warning in its
+tone.
+
+"Yes," Duff admitted.  "I guess I'm a good deal of a sneak."
+
+"Get up on your feet, then.  We understand one another," said Bodson.
+"Go ahead, if you want to, and carry out your plans for a merry evening.
+But don't make the mistake of calling ugly names again, and don't forget
+all you've said about the square deal.  Hang these tenderfeet, if that's
+what you want to do, but don't hit men without first giving them a
+chance to hit back."
+
+Duff, shaking partly from fear, though more from a sense of his
+humiliation, rose to his feet.  For a moment he stood choking down his
+varied emotions.  Then, with an attempt at his old-time, suave banter,
+he inquired:
+
+"Are you young gentlemen ready for the collar and neck-tie party that
+we've planned to give you?"
+
+"As ready as you are," observed Tom dryly.
+
+"And you?" asked Duff, turning to Hazelton.  "Are you ready?"
+
+"I'm not particular about feeling a lariat around my neck," Harry
+answered, "but I'll follow my friend Reade anywhere--even where you
+propose to send us."
+
+"Ay, but that's courage of the kind you don't expect to find in a blamed
+tenderfoot!" remarked Jeff Moore, resting a hand first on Tom's shoulder
+and then on Harry's.
+
+"Why?" asked Tom.  "Does it surprise you?"
+
+"It shore does," replied Jeff.
+
+"Is courage a matter of geography, then?" Tom inquired.
+
+"I--I--pardner, you've got me there," Jeff admitted, looking puzzled.
+"Yet, somehow, I never looked for much courage in a fellow who hailed
+from east of the Mississippi."
+
+George Ashby had been looking on during the last few moments, his eyes
+glittering strangely.  Yet, as he said nothing, the attention of the
+others had turned from him.
+
+Jeff Moore happened to turn just in time to see the muzzle of the
+shotgun turned fully on Tom Reade's waist line, and Ashby's forefinger
+resting on one of the triggers.
+
+Bang! spoke the gun, a sheet of flame leaped forth.
+
+Tom Reade did not even start.  All his nerve had come to the surface in
+that instant.  He was unharmed, for Jeff's sweeping arm had knocked
+aside the muzzle of the gun and the shot had entered the leg of one of
+the raiders.
+
+"What'd you do that for, Jeff?" groaned the injured man, sinking to the
+alkali dust.
+
+But Moore was busy with the mad hotel keeper, having clinched with him,
+and now being engaged in taking away the shotgun, one barrel of which
+was still loaded.
+
+"Stand back there, friends," warned Rafe Bodson, who still held his
+revolver in his right hand.  "We don't want to see any more of the party
+hurt."
+
+Jeff had the gun in a moment, despite the insane fury with which Ashby
+fought.
+
+"Take care of this, Rafe," requested Jeff, turning over the gun, which
+Bodson received with his left hand.
+
+Ashby, momentarily free, sprang at the new bolder of the weapon, but
+Moore tripped him and fell upon him.
+
+The other men stood by as though fascinated, not interfering.  Perhaps
+they felt that their safety depended upon Ashby's being disarmed.
+
+There was a short, sharp scuffle on the ground after which Moore rose,
+leaving the hotel man with his hands tied behind his back.
+
+"And I request," remarked Moore, "that no gentleman present cut the
+knots that I have tied.  It'll be a favor to me to have Ashby left alone
+for the present."
+
+"Now, then, Rafe or Jeff," spoke the gambler, mustering up what remained
+of his courage, "since you two have taken charge of affairs, won't you
+be good enough to inform us what your pleasure is?"
+
+"We're not in charge," retorted Bodson sullenly.  "All we've undertaken
+to do is to look out for the square deal that you promised, Duff, and
+which you didn't exhibit in a way that we liked.  As for the rest, go
+ahead when you like--but don't do any more hitting with your fists."
+
+"We'll go ahead with the lariat, then?" hinted Duff eagerly.
+
+"If that's the pleasure of the gentlemen," Bodson agreed, bowing
+slightly.
+
+To the gambler it seemed the opportune moment to rush matters.
+
+"Bring up lariats, two of you," Duff ordered, turning around to the
+others. "And don't waste time over it."
+
+The rawhide ropes were brought.  The gambler himself tied the nooses,
+testing them to see that they ran freely.
+
+"Bring Reade and Hazelton under the trees," was Duff's next order, which
+was obeyed.  Bodson and Moore, their weapons still in their hands,
+followed, keeping keen watch over the way the affair was conducted.
+
+"Any choice of trees Reade?" inquired Jin Duff.
+
+"None," answered Tom shortly.  His face was pallid and set, though he
+did not show any other sign of fear.
+
+"Hazelton?"
+
+"One tree is as good as another," Harry answered in a strangely quiet
+voice.
+
+In the midst of an impressive silence, and with motions that seemed
+oddly unreal to the tended victims, Duff placed the two young engineers.
+A lariat was thrown over a low limb of each of the trees.  Then, with
+slightly trembling hands the gambler adjusted a over the neck of each
+bound boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TOM AND HARRY VANISH
+
+
+"How d'ye like that, Rafe?" queried Jeff Moore, as Jim Duff stepped back
+and viewed the young engineers with a diabolical smile before giving the
+fatal signal.
+
+"I don't like it," muttered Bodson.
+
+"No more do I."
+
+"Shall we stop it?"
+
+"Yes.  I'm sick of Jim Duff.  This night has turned me against the
+smooth-tongued coward."
+
+"Get busy, then, Rafe!"
+
+"Shall we stand the crowd off and set the boys free?"
+
+"Pump both of your shooting-irons loose into the air--I'll do the rest,"
+replied Moore.
+
+Cr-r-r-rack!  Pointing his weapons skyward, Bodson had quickly obeyed
+Moore's command.
+
+"Now, what--" began one of the raiders, wheeling instantly.
+
+"Rafe's going to give 'em a proper send off," grinned one of Duff's men.
+
+"No!" shouted the other.  "That's a bluff.  He and Jeff are trying to
+queer the whole game."
+
+With cries of anger, several of the men sprang toward Jeff, who had
+bared his sheath knife and was about to free Tom and Harry.
+
+"Here--stop that, you traitors!" roared Duff, leaping forward.
+
+"I've four shots left, Jim," remarked Rafe Bodson calmly, as he ceased
+firing.  "Call me names, if you think it wise."
+
+Like a flash Duff drew one of his own revolvers.  Before he had time to
+fire, however, three men threw themselves between Bodson and the
+gambler.
+
+"Stop talking gun play, Rafe," warned one of the three.  "Act like a
+gentleman."
+
+"I've forgotten how to do that," Rafe remarked.  "I've traveled with
+this outfit too long."
+
+"Put up your guns.  Then we'll attend to this pair of youngsters."
+
+"My guns remain in my hands," Bodson declared coolly.  "I expect to die
+with my boots on to-night.  I reckon Jeff has figured it out the same
+way."
+
+"I have," Moore answered coolly, as he stepped over beside Bodson.  Then
+deliberately, yet with an indescribably swift motion, he drew two
+revolvers.
+
+"Stand out, Jim Duff!  Be a man, for once in your miserable career,"
+ordered Rafe Bodson.  "Don't try to protect yourself by hiding behind
+the bodies of men who don't know any better than to follow your lead."
+
+Jim Duff didn't accept the challenge.  Instead, he crouched behind two
+of his followers, taking deliberate aim with his revolver at Bodson.
+
+But he never fired that cowardly shot.  Like a flash from the sky came
+an interruption that created panic among the assembled scoundrels.
+
+"Here we have 'em, gentlemen," announced the steady voice of
+Superintendent Hawkins from the western end of the gully.  "Get 'em all
+rounded up.  If they've done Mr. Reade and Mr. Hazelton any injury then
+don't let one of them get away alive."
+
+The low sand piles near by seemed swarming with men.  The steel barrels
+of firearms glistened even in the darkness.
+
+The scout had been sent out to the eastward.  None had thought of
+watching the western approach to the gully.
+
+"Shoot, boys!" screamed Jim Duff, wheeling in a sudden frenzy of
+desperation.  He fired straight in the direction of Hawkins's voice.
+
+In another instant the air was rent with the sound of shots.  Flashes
+from many revolvers lit up the darkness almost as well as torches could
+have done.
+
+Jim Duff, having started his followers to firing, stole off in the
+darkness, leaving them to bear the brunt of the return fire of Hawkins
+and his men.
+
+George Ashby lay on the ground bound as he had been left, his sawed-off
+shotgun not far away and his belt full of shells.
+
+"Rouse yourself, Ash!" muttered the gambler, as he slashed the hotel
+man's bonds with his knife.  "Get your gun, but don't use it now.  Move
+quickly, and we'll get away from here and take Reade and Hazelton with
+us.  Put your mind on your work, Ash, and follow my orders.  Don't try
+to think too much for yourself.  Here, this way!"
+
+The scene of the fighting had already shifted from the immediate
+neighborhood of the twin trees.  Duff guided his mad companion along in
+the darkness until they halted close to where the two engineers stood
+bound, powerless to join in the fray.
+
+"Shall we shoot them here and now?" whispered Ashby, a wild light
+glittering in his eyes.
+
+"No," returned Duff.  "We'll sneak up behind them, club them with
+revolvers and carry, them off.  Then we can do as we please with them.
+You quiet Hazelton and I'll attend to Reade."
+
+The two scoundrels crept up behind their victims.
+
+A moment later Duff quickly cut the lariat about the neck of Tom Reade,
+who had been rendered unconscious from the terrific blow dealt him by
+the gambler.  Ashby had been equally successful in "quieting" Hazelton.
+
+"Now hustle," ordered Duff.  "You pick up Hazelton.  I'll take Reade.
+Carry 'em over your shoulder--that's the way to do.  Now, follow me and
+don't make a sound.  We'll please ourselves this night with what we'll
+do to the meddling pair!"
+
+With Tom Reade over his shoulder, senseless and inert, Duff started off
+in the darkness, while the rattle of firearms continued.
+
+George Ashby, muttering to himself, followed with Harry Hazelton.
+
+The gambler staggered slightly under the weight of his human burden.
+Yet he moved rapidly, a strange eagerness lighting up his eyes.
+
+Jim Duff knew that he would never again dare to enter the town of
+Paloma, yet the gambler thirsted, before fleeing to new scenes, to be
+revenged on Tom Reade.  With that object in view, Duff was willing to
+take great risks.
+
+As for Ashby, who, still clutching his shotgun in his left hand,
+staggered along under the burden of Hazelton's weight, the hotel man was
+no longer responsible for his actions.  Rage and wickedness had made him
+a maniac, who might be restrained but could not be punished by law.
+
+Within two minutes the firing behind them died out.  Soon there were
+distant sounds of searching.  Plainly Hawkins and the other friends of
+the young engineers were hunting diligently for Tom and Harry.
+
+"Dump your man, Ashby," commanded Jim Duff, halting at last.  "It will
+be a mistake to go too far.  Their friends won't expect to find 'em so
+close, and they'll soon be searching farther away."
+
+So Ashby dropped Harry on to the sand beside Tom.  Then the wickedest
+possible gleam came into the hotel man's eyes as he loaded his shotgun.
+
+"We'll fill 'em full of lead right here and now," whispered the hotel
+keeper.  "Then we'll be sure that they can't get away from us again."
+
+"Not so fast!" retorted Duff warningly.  "We can't shoot now.  If we do,
+there'll be no way to get out of this alive.  Look yonder!"
+
+Duff swung his mad friend around, pointing to a gleam of light that
+shone out over the desert.
+
+"An automobile," muttered the gambler.  "And there's another--and
+another! There must be six or eight of them out to-night, and all of 'em
+crammed with fighting men.  A shot would bring two or three carloads of
+ugly fellows down upon us."
+
+"What are we going to do, then?" demanded the hotel keeper, in a
+menacing tone.
+
+"Wait awhile," urged the gambler.  "You're seeing what the plan of the
+enemy is.  They're circling about, but they're further out from the
+gully than we are.  The cars will go on cutting larger and larger
+circle, and all the time getting farther away from us.  In half an hour
+the cars and the men will be so far away that we need give no thought to
+them.  Then we can attend to Reade and Hazelton."
+
+"What are you going to do with them?" demanded Ashby in a whisper, his
+cunning eyes lighting with a fire of added eagerness.
+
+"We'll get 'em awake, first of all," nodded Jim Duff.  "Then we'll
+attend to them."
+
+"Remember, they ruined my business!" whispered the hotel man.
+
+"Well, didn't they ruin my business, too?" snarled Duff.  "Didn't they
+cant like a pair of hypocrites, and turn hundreds of their workmen
+against coming in to play in my place?  Didn't these young hounds keep
+me from winning thousands of dollars of railroad money?  Ash, I tell
+you, these young fellows have hit me hard!  First, they broke up my
+games.  Next, they talked their men out of going into Paloma and
+spending money for drink. Why, Ash, next thing you know, they would have
+brought missionaries to Paloma to convert men and to build churches!"
+
+As Ashby glared at the unconscious boys from under his black brows he
+looked as though he believed them capable of all the wickedness that Jim
+Duff's imagination had charged against them.
+
+"I can't wait!" groaned the hotel man.  "Just one barrel of shot apiece
+into each of 'em!"
+
+"No, no, no, Ash!  Haven't I always been your good friend?"
+
+"You surely have,  Jim Duff," admitted the mad hotel man.  "You're the
+one man alive to-night that I'd trust."
+
+"Then trust me a little further," coaxed the gambler virtuously.  "Trust
+to my brains tonight, George, and you'll feast on revenge!"
+
+"But you keep me waiting so long for it!" complained the lunatic.
+
+"Don't you trust me, George?"
+
+"You know I do, Jim Duff."
+
+"Then trust me a little longer.  Be quiet, and be patient."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Sh!" warned Duff suddenly, throwing himself flat on the ground.  "Down
+with you, Ash!"
+
+"What is it?" whispered the hotel man in the gambler's ear as he too
+sank to the ground.
+
+"Sh!" once more warned the gambler.  "Use your eyes, George.  Look out
+over the sand in the darkness.  Do you see two men prowling this way?"
+
+"Yes," assented the hotel man, after a pause.
+
+"They're looking for us--enemies, George.  Use all your cunning.  Above
+all, be silent and lie low!  Don't make a move, unless I tell you to do
+so. Show your trust in me, Ash, as you've never shown it before.  If you
+don't, we'll be cheated out of our revenge!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+RAFE AND JEFF MISCALCULATE
+
+
+The two men whom the craven gambler had sighted were coming slowly
+onward, their movements suggesting a good deal of care and watchfulness.
+
+Nor did they come in a wholly straight line.  That they did not suspect
+the nearness of Jim Duff and his mad companion was plain at a glance.
+
+"Burrow in the sand!" whispered the gambler in Ashby's ear.  "Quiet!  Be
+ready, but don't do anything unless I give you the word."
+
+"When you do give me the word," trembled the hotel man, "I'll kill 'em
+both."
+
+"Not unless we have to do so--remember!" ordered the gambler.  "We want,
+if possible, to take 'em alive."
+
+Let us now go back to the two men whom Duff and Ashby were watching so
+closely.
+
+They were Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore.
+
+Both had come out of the recent fighting unharmed.  Neither Rafe nor
+Jeff had fired a shot at the invading forces led by Hawkins.  Instead,
+the pair had slipped stealthily away, until they had gotten out of the
+immediate zone of the hot firing.  Then they hid under some bushes.
+
+"An hour ago I'd have felt like a sneak, not standing by the gang any
+better," whispered Jeff uneasily.
+
+"Same here," Rafe admitted.  "In fact, I'm wondering whether I acted
+straight in running off like this."
+
+"Aren't you sure about it in your own mind?" asked Jeff slowly.
+
+"Almost," Rafe returned.  "All that bothers me is not sticking by the
+same crowd that we started out with to-night.  As for Jim Duff--"
+
+"He's poison, and deadly poison at that," broke in Jeff.
+
+"That's just what he is, pardner."
+
+"Yet I used to like Duff pretty well."
+
+"So did I," nodded Jeff.  "But that was when I thought he had some
+sand."
+
+"The fellow's a skulking coyote!"
+
+"A coyote is brave, compared with Jim Duff," contended Jeff Moore.
+
+"Reade and Hazelton showed the real sand!"
+
+"I never thought tenderfeet could be as brave," glowed Moore.
+
+"Jeff, I reckon Reade and Hazelton aren't real tenderfeet any more.
+They've been west some time.  But, then, such fellows wouldn't be
+tenderfeet even if they lived in New Jersey all the time.  Courage
+belongs in some fellows, no matter where they work."
+
+"The fighting seems to be over," observed Jeff Moore.
+
+"Then the friends of the two engineers must have found them," suggested
+Bodson.
+
+"It doesn't sound like it over there.  The newcomers seem to be doing a
+lot of hunting in the gully."
+
+"Let's move in closer," proposed Rafe.
+
+Crawling on their stomachs, the pair moved in closer.  As they arrived,
+unseen, they were in time to see the late fighting men clamber into
+their automobiles.  Hawkins could be heard giving directions for the
+further search for Reade and Hazelton.
+
+Then the cars started away.
+
+"What do you reckon?" demanded Jeff, looking at Bodson.
+
+"I reckon some of Duff's crowd slipped out of the fight, got the two
+youngsters, and slipped away with them," Bodson answered.
+
+"Then it was Duff--he was one of 'em," returned Jeff, with a strong
+conviction.  "From what I've seen of Duff to-night he'd rather do a
+running trick than a fighting one."
+
+"It would take two to carry both youngsters away.  Who was the other
+one?" Rafe wondered aloud.
+
+"Most likely the fellow who'd mind Duff best."
+
+"That must mean poor George Ashby."
+
+"Let's slip into the gully and see what we can find."
+
+One fact learned in the gully astonished both investigators.  Despite
+the volleys that had been fired no dead or wounded men lay about.  Of
+course Hawkins could have taken any injured men away in the automobiles.
+Plainly the raiders had been equally fortunate in getting their wounded
+away on their horses.  Mounted men familiar with the desert would know
+many paths where horses could travel, but where automobiles could not
+follow.
+
+"Our hosses are gone," discovered Jeff a few moments.
+
+"Of course," nodded Rafe.  "The crowd we were out with wouldn't be slow
+in a simple little piece of every-day honesty like stealing hosses!"
+
+"I'm through with any such gang after this, Rafe.  How about you?"
+
+"I'm shore going to be careful about the kind of company I pick.  But,
+Jeff, we'll have to travel away from these parts.  No good company
+around here would welcome us.  They wouldn't like the only references we
+could give, Jeff."
+
+"Oh, shore, we'll have to travel," agreed Moore.  "That is, if the
+sheriff doesn't take up our tickets before we get started."
+
+"All this talk isn't showing us what became of Reade and Hazelton,"
+remarked Rafe Bodson.  "Let's go back under the trees and see if we can
+find what has become of Reade and Hazelton.  Before I change my post-
+office box I'm going to try to do those two youngsters a good turn."
+
+So the pair had started off.  Yet, like the automobile searchers, Jeff
+and Rafe did not expect to run across Tom and Harry and their captors so
+close to the gully.
+
+For this reason the pair proceeded without very much caution at the
+outset.
+
+Even now, after Duff and Ashby had sighted them, Moore and Bodson halted
+twice to light matches and examine the trail that their keen eyes had
+discovered as moving westward from the gully.
+
+"Now, I reckon we've got the general direction," muttered Rafe Bodson
+when, after having once more discovered the tracks he turned and got the
+general course.  "We know the way to head."
+
+"Then we won't light any more matches," suggested Jeff.  "It might get
+us into trouble."
+
+Accordingly they kept on, guiding themselves now by their general
+knowledge of the country.
+
+Jim Duff and Ashby were well concealed, not only by the sand, but by a
+little fringe of brush as well.
+
+Hence it is not to be wondered at that Bodson and Moore went forward to
+be astonished by a sudden movement in the sand, followed by a hail of
+"Gentlemen, get your hands up, or take your medicine!"
+
+The command came in Jim Duff's tones.
+
+He was barely thirty feet away from the surprised pair, one of his
+revolvers leveled so to drop Bodson at a touch of the trigger.
+
+George Ashby's sawed-off shotgun looked squarely at the region bounded
+by Jeff Moore's belt.
+
+"It's your turn, gentlemen," agreed Rafe, he put his hands in the air.
+
+"You've got us--be decent," grinned Jeff, as he, too, raised his hands
+upward.
+
+"Get your hands up higher!" ordered Jim Duff in his deadliest tone.
+These men were now helpless, and the gambler merely chuckled inwardly at
+the thought.
+
+"Is this where we shoot them?" queried the mad hotel keeper.
+
+"Yes--after a minute or two!" nodded Jim Duff, who wished first to
+determine whether the automobiles of the searching party were moving too
+near to them.
+
+"I can hardly wait for the word!" quivered Ashby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+"How long are we to keep our hands up, Duff?" questioned Jeff.
+
+"Quiet," hissed the gambler.  "I'm listening."
+
+"If it's for friends of ours," grimaced Rafe Bodson, "you needn't listen
+any longer.  We haven't any friends in either crowd now."
+
+"Quiet, I tell you!" snarled Duff.
+
+No noise of moving automobiles came to the gambler's keen ears in the
+darkness of the night.
+
+"Ready," faintly whispered Duff, giving Ashby a slight nudge.
+
+"Shoot 'em?" whispered the mad hotel man.
+
+"Yes; you hit Jeff.  I'll take care of Rafe!"
+
+Just then darkness fell upon the gambler.  He was knocked flat and
+senseless by a blow of a fist from behind.
+
+In the same instant a man leaped upon George Ashby, bearing him to
+earth.
+
+Bang!  The noise of the discharging shotgun broke on the night's
+stillness. Bang! crashed the other barrel.
+
+The muzzle had been pointed skyward, however, and both charges of
+buckshot had been driven off into space, to fall to the earth many yards
+beyond.
+
+"Reade!  Hazelton!" choked Rafe Bodson, leaping forward.  "You fellows
+certainly have grit!  Here, Hazelton, let me help you with that loco
+(crazy) hotel man."
+
+Jeff, in the meantime had rolled Jim Duff over on his back, then sat on
+him.  When Duff returned to consciousness he found himself gazing into
+the muzzle of an automatic revolver.
+
+Harry and Bodson made a quick, sure job of tying Ashby's wrists with a
+cord that Rafe supplied.
+
+"You think you've stopped me, don't you?" snarled the hotel man, wild
+with rage.
+
+"We stopped you in time to keep you from shooting down two men who were
+at your mercy," retorted Harry sternly.
+
+"What's that?" gasped Rafe.
+
+"They were going to shoot you with your hands in the air," Tom declared.
+
+"That's another of your lies, Reade," snarled the gambler.
+
+"It's you who are doing the lying, Duff," rejoined Tom stiffly.  "I
+came to my senses just in time to hear you tell Ashby to kill one man
+while you killed the other."
+
+"So that was the game, was it?" said Jeff.
+
+"No, it wasn't," snapped Jim Duff.
+
+"Shut up," ordered Jeff unbelievingly.  "Duff, we've seen enough of you
+to-night to know that an Apache has ten times as much honor as you have,
+and a rattlesnake has twenty times as much decency.  You lying,
+miserable, white-livered, smooth-tongued, poisonous reptile in human
+form.  If you open your mouth to say another word you'll have me so wild
+that I'll pull the trigger of this automatic before I intend to do so."
+
+"Thank goodness you had become conscious too, Harry!" breathed Tom
+fervently.  "I don't believe I could have knocked both men over in time
+to prevent a killing.  I managed to get my hands free just in time to
+get on the job."
+
+"I had known for some moments what was going on around me," Hazelton
+replied.  "But I was lying with my eyes closed, and keeping mighty
+quiet. I was trying to hear your breathing, so I could decide whether
+you had come to your senses, when all of a sudden you sat up and freed
+my hands.  Ugh!" he added with disgust, as he reached up and slipped the
+remnant of rawhide noose from around his neck.
+
+"What'll we do with this snake and, his weak-minded brother?" asked Jeff
+dryly.  "Tie 'em up and ship 'em into Paloma?"
+
+"Fire off your revolver two or three times," suggested Tom, who had
+caught a faint, far away sound of an automobile.  "That may bring a
+machine over here."
+
+"You shoot, Rafe," urge Moore.  "I'll want to keep my weapon handy for
+this crooked card-sharp."
+
+Rafe obligingly emptied one of his revolvers into the air.  From a
+distance came the honk of an automobile horn, as though in answer to the
+signal shots.  Soon the noise of an automobile engine became more
+distinct. Finally the body of a large car loomed up in the darkness. A
+few shouts brought the car to the spot.
+
+"This you, Mr. Reade?" called the joy voice of Superintendent Hawkins.
+"And Hazelton, safe, also?"
+
+All five seats in this car were occupied.  Six more men had to be
+crowded in somehow, after Jim Duff had been tied with his hands behind
+him.  Most of them had to stand.
+
+"Back to Paloma, as fast as you can go with safety," ordered Mr.
+Hawkins, as soon as all were inside.  "Gracious, but there'll be a
+joyful demonstration back in camp as soon as the good word is received."
+
+As the car sped along over the desert the story was told of how the
+pursuit had been made.
+
+It was Mr. Hawkins who had tried to wire from camp into town, calling
+for cars and posses to go in pursuit of the raiders.
+
+As Tom had imagined at the outset, the raiders had cut the railroad
+telegraph wire.  Discovering this, Mr. Hawkins had leaped on to the bare
+back of a horse at camp and had covered the distance at a gallop.
+
+Men had been quickly rounded up within the very few minutes that were
+needed in getting the cars out and ready to run.  There were hundreds of
+men in Paloma who had grown to despise Duff and all the evil crew behind
+the gambler.
+
+From the outset the leaders of the posse, on hearing, of the direction
+first taken by the fleeing raiders, had calculated on the gully as the
+probable place of halting.
+
+While the posse was still on the way out to the gully, and at some
+distance away, the sound of Ashby's discharging gun had reached them.
+Reasoning that the raiders would probably place a guard only on the town
+end of the gully, the posse had made a wide detour, so as to approach
+the gully from the westward.  Leaving the cars at a considerable
+distance, the pursuers, with Mr. Hawkins at their head, had made quick
+time on foot.
+
+In the fighting that had followed five men of the posse had been hit,
+though none dangerously.  These wounded men, after the fight, had been
+sent back to Paloma in one of the automobiles.
+
+"We saw some of the raiders fall during the lighting," said Mr. Hawkins,
+"but their friends made a quick retreat and got all hands back to their
+horses.  We felt sure they didn't have you, Mr. Reade and Mr. Hazelton,
+so we let the raiders slip away and spent our time in trying to find
+where you had been taken or if you had escaped.  Well, it's all right
+now!"
+
+As the automobile party approached the town, searchlights from other
+cars showed the remaining pursuers had heard the signals sounded by the
+horn of the first automobile and were returning.
+
+As the returning men entered the outlaying streets the little town was
+found to be anything but a quiet community.  Despite the early morning
+hour, the streets were crowded.
+
+"Where's the chief of police?" inquired Mr. Hawkins, as the first car
+entered the town and pulled up.
+
+"I'll find him for you, Cap," offered a man on horseback.
+
+"If you will be so good."
+
+As the horseman galloped away Hawkins signed to the others to step out.
+
+"Duff, we're not going to be troubled with your company much longer,"
+smiled Hawkins.
+
+Tom and Harry had already leaped down to the sidewalk when the gambler
+was helped to alight.  Duff's hands were still behind his back though,
+unknown to his captors, he had succeeded in working them free.
+
+With a stealthy movement the gambler suddenly reached forward, drawing a
+revolver from another man's holster.
+
+Ere the owner was aware of the loss of the weapon Duff took full aim at
+Tom Reade.
+
+Crack!
+
+It was the pistol of a deputy sheriff that spoke first.  That officer
+had been the only one to detect the gambler's action, and he had fired
+instantly.
+
+Jim Duff sank, to the sidewalk, groaning while the deputy sheriff dryly
+explained the cause of his firing.  A loaded revolver was still gripped
+in Duff's right hand, though the gambler was too weak and in too much
+pain to fire.
+
+Dr. Furniss' office was near by, and the young physician, sharing in the
+popular excitement, was awake.  He came out on the run, bending over the
+wounded man to examine him.  "Duff," said Dr. Furniss gravely, after a
+brief examination, "I deem it my duty to tell you that you've dealt your
+last card.  Have you any wishes to express before we move you?"
+
+"I--want to--talk to--Reade," groaned the injured man.
+
+"Certainly," replied Tom, when the request was repeated to him.
+Stepping softly to where the gambler lay on the sidewalk, Reade bent
+over him.
+
+"Duff," said Reade gravely, "you and I haven't always been the best of
+friends, but I can say honestly that I'm sorry to see you in this
+plight. I hope that you may recover, yet get some happiness out of
+life."
+
+But the gambler's eyes blazed with ferocity.
+
+"Don't waste any soft soap on me, Reade," he said slowly, and with many
+pauses.  "The Doc is a fool.  I'm going to get well, and there will be
+just one happiness ahead of me.  That will be to find you, wherever you
+may be, and to what I tried to do to you to-night."
+
+"Can't you forget that sort of thing, Duff?" asked Tom gravely.  "Not
+that I'm afraid of you; you've seen enough of me to-night to know that
+I'm not afraid of you.  But I'm afraid for you.  You're close to
+eternity, Duff, and I'd like to see you go to your death with a calm,
+hopeful, decent mind. I'd like to see you go with a hope of a better
+life hereafter."
+
+"Don't give me any of your canting talk, Reade," snarled the gambler
+weakly.
+
+"I'm not going to do so," sighed Tom, rising.  "I'm afraid it would be
+useless.  Try to remember, Duff, that I allow myself to have no hard
+feelings against you.  If you possibly can recover I shall be glad to
+hear that you've done so."
+
+Then Tom stepped over to Dr. Furniss' side, whispering to him:
+
+"Doc, you'll see to it that some clergyman is called, won't you?  Any
+clergyman that is the most likely to reach the heart and the soul of a
+hardened fellow like Jim Duff."
+
+Dr. Furniss nodded.  Men appeared with an old door that was to be used
+as a stretcher.  On this the gambler was placed, and the physician gave
+him such immediate attention as could be supplied on the sidewalk, for
+Jim Duff had been shot through the right lung.  Then the bearers lifted
+the door, bearing the gambler back to the now gloomy Mansion House, the
+doctor following.  Ashby, who had been strangely quiet after the
+shooting, was taken to the local police station and placed in a cell.
+
+Just after the two had been taken care of, and while the crowd still
+lingered, a young man pushed his way through to the center of the crowd.
+
+"I heard that Jim Duff had returned to town," began the young man.  The
+speaker was Clarence Farnsworth, the foolish young easterner who had
+been sadly fleeced by the gambler.
+
+"Yes; Duff came back," said Mr. Hawkins, quietly.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Farnsworth.  "I must leave in the morning, and I
+owe Duff seven hundred dollars.  I want to pay it to him."
+
+"Money you lost gambling with Duff?" questioned Hawkins.
+
+"It's a debt of honor that I owe Mr. Duff," Farnsworth replied, flushing
+considerably.
+
+"Son, take one little hint from me," continued Hawkins.  "No money ever
+lost to a gambler in card playing is a debt of honor.  It's merely the
+liability of a chump and a fool.  No gambler ever uses any real honor.
+Men of honor work for the money that they need or want.  Duff had a
+smooth way of talking, an agreeable manner with his profitable victims,
+but he never had a shred of honor.  It isn't possible to be a gambler
+and a man of honor.  If you've seven hundred dollars that you lost to
+Duff at cards, put it in your pocket and get out of Paloma as soon as
+you can.  Duff won't need the money, anyway.  He's down at the Mansion
+House, dying of a bullet wound that he got through his last piece of
+trickery.  I hate to speak harshly of a dying man, but I'd like to see
+you get a grain or two of common sense into your head, boy."
+
+Again Farnsworth flushed, but three or four seasoned Arizona men who
+stood near by added their advice, in line with that of Mr. Hawkins.
+Clarence soon edged away.
+
+An hour after daylight Jim Duff died.  Dr. Furniss and the others who
+were with the gambler at the last were unable to state that Duff had
+offered any expression of regret for his evil life, or for his last
+wicked acts.
+
+Jim Duff died as he had lived.
+
+George Ashby was sent to an asylum and his property sold for his
+benefit. After a year he was discharged as cured.  He has vanished,
+swallowed up in some other community, and nothing more has been heard of
+him.
+
+Trailed by detectives of a fire insurance company, Frank Danes was soon
+caught and brought back to Arizona.  He was fairly convicted of having
+set the old Cactus House on fire, though he could not be persuaded to
+admit himself an agent of the Colthwaite Company.  Fred Ransom, the
+other agent, is believed to be still in the employ of the Colthwaite
+Company's "gloom department."
+
+Mr. Hawkins is still in the employ of the A., G. & N. M.  So are foremen
+Bell, Rivers and Mendoza.
+
+Tim Griggs proved himself so thoroughly while foreman at the building of
+the new rail-road hotel in Paloma, that he has gone on to other and
+better work.  Griggs is now a prosperous man, and, best of all, he has
+his little daughter with him.
+
+Lessee Carter has flourished in the new railroad hotel.  Rafe Bodson and
+Jeff Moore are his clerks.
+
+The day came when Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton were able to apply the
+final and most severe test to the roadbed that ran across the Man-killer
+quicksand.  Their work was finished, and finished splendidly, adding
+another great triumph to their record as young engineers.
+
+"These hot countries are fine, for a while," grunted Harry Hazelton, as
+the young engineers left Paloma in a special Pullman car that General
+Manager Ellsworth had sent for their use.
+
+"They are fine, in fact; but one gets tired of working on a blistering
+desert.  I hope our next long undertaking will be in a country where ice
+grows as one of the natural fruits."
+
+"Greenland, for instance?" smiled Tom Reade.
+
+"Alaska, at all events," responded Harry hopefully.
+
+"Do you know where I'm figuring on making my next stop?" Tom inquired.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In good old Gridley, the town where we were born, boy!  I'm fairly
+aching for a sight of the good old town.  Will you go with me?"
+
+"For a few weeks, yes," Harry agreed.  "But after that little rest?"
+
+"After our visit to the good old home town," Tom Reade replied, "we'll
+go anywhere on earth where a good, big chance for engineering offers.
+Harry, we've yet nearly all of our work ahead of us to do if we're ever
+going to be real, Class A engineers!"
+
+That our young engineers found still greater work awaiting them will be
+discovered in the next volume in this series, which is published under
+the title, "The Young Engineers in Nevada; or, Seeking Fortune on the
+Turn of a Pick."
+
+In this narrative we find our young friends wholly away from railroad
+work, but engaged in an even greater undertaking.  The adventures
+awaiting them were more exciting than any they had yet encountered.
+Fame and fortune, too, offered a greater opportunity.  How the young
+engineers embraced the opportunity will be made plain to our readers.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Engineers in Arizona
+by H. Irving Hancock
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN ARIZONA ***
+
+This file should be named azeng10.txt or azeng10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, azeng11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, azeng10a.txt
+
+Produced by Sean Pobuda
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/azeng10.zip b/old/azeng10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1574e18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/azeng10.zip