he seized his opportunity in our discussion of the heroic engineering by which the penetralia of the Royal Gorge was opened to the locomotive, and began:
“Talk about blastin’! [A]The boy’s yarn about blowin’ up a mountain’s nothin’ but a squib to what we did when we blasted the Ryo Grand railroad through the Royal Gorge.
“One day the boss sez to me, sez he, ‘Hyar, you, do you know how to handle gunpowder?’
“Sez I, ‘You bet!’
“Sez he, ‘Do you see that ere ledge a thousand feet above us, stickin’ out like a hat-brim?’ Sez I, ‘You bet I do.’
“‘Wall,’ sez he, ‘that’ll smash a train into a grease-spot some day, ef we don’t blast it off.’
“’Jess so,’ sez I.
“Wall, we went up a gulch, and clum the mountain an’ come to the prissipass, and got down on all fours, an’ looked down straight three thousand feet. The river down there looked like a lariat a’ runnin’ after a broncho. I began to feel like a kite a’ sailin’ in the air like. Forty church steeples in one war’n’t nowhar to that ere pinnacle in the clouds. An’ after a while it begun rainin’ an’ snowin’ an’ hailin’ an’ thundrin’ an’ doin’ a reglar tornado biznis down thar, an’ a reglar summer day whar we wuz on top. Wall, there wuz a crevice from where we wuz, an’ we sorter slid down into it, to within fifty feet o’ the ledge, an’ then they let me down on the ledge with a rope an’ drill. When I got down thar, I looked up an’ sez to the boss, ‘Boss, how are ye goin’ to get that ‘cussion powder down?’ Yer see, we used this ere powder as’ll burn like a pine-knot ‘thout explodin’, but if yer happen to drop it, it’ll blow yer into next week ’fore ye kin wink yer eye.
“‘Wall,’ sez the boss, sez he, ‘hyar’s fifty pound, an’ yer must ketch it.’
“‘Ketch it,’ sez I. ‘Hain’t ye gettin’ a little keerless—s’pose I miss it?’ I sez.