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 eve
ry 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.
The Young Engineers in Arizona Page 2
