“I’ve been looking over the land with Pickand; he says we’ll sink a shaft at the base of the butte below the mesa, where you are laying tracks now. We won’t have to go far, Pickand says. There’s coal—thick veins of it—running back into the wall of the butte.”
“All right, sir,” said Carson. But he scratched his head in perplexity, eyeing Corrigan sidelong. “Ye woudn’t be sayin’ that ye’ll be diggin’ for coal on the railroad’s right av way, wud ye?”
“No!” snapped Corrigan.
“Thin it will be on Trevison’s land. Have ye bargained wid him for it?”
“No! Look here, Carson. Mind your own business and do as you’re told!”
“I’m elicted, I s’pose; but it’s a job I ain’t admirin’ to do. If ye’ve got half the sinse I give ye credit for havin’, ye’ll be lettin’ that mon Trevison alone—I’d a lot sooner smoke a segar in that shed av dynamite than to cross him!”
Corrigan smiled and turned to look in the direction in which the Irishman was pointing. A small, flat-roofed frame building, sheathed with corrugated iron, met his view. Crude signs, large enough to be read hundreds of feet distant, were affixed to the walls:
| “CAUTION. DYNAMITE.” |
“Do you keep much of it there?”