“Hello, my boy,” General Dodge greeted.
“Pat Miles said you wanted to see me, sir.”
“That’s right. Come in, dog and all. Gentlemen, this is Terry Richards. They tell me he risked his life to save the boarding-train from being wrecked during the Indian attack. I move that we all shake hands with him.”
Terry, considerably flustrated, had his hand shaken, all ’round.
“Well, what’s your job, Terry?” asked General Dodge. He was a handsome man, every inch a soldier, but with a very kind eye above a dark, trimmed beard. Nobody could feel afraid of General Dodge.
“I help bring up the rails, on a truck. I ride a yellow mule, sir.”
“You’re rather a big boy to be doing that.”
“Yes, sir; but that’s my job. Somebody has to do it. The men have got to have rails.”
“Very necessary, in building a railroad,” laughed General Blair.
“We did almost two miles today,” informed Terry. “We’d have done two miles sure if the Injuns hadn’t tried to stop us.”