David Vallory

by Francis Lynde

“There was more to it than that, but we needn’t go into the contemptible whys and wherefores,” Grillage went on, with a portentous frown. “I let him out, and for a month or more we’ve been rocking along without a chief—and with a man against us who knows all the tricks of the trade. I’ve called you in to ask if you think you are big enough to swing the job and hold up our end of the pole. Grimsby says you are.”

David Vallory gasped. It was a tremendous promotion for a young man less than four years out of college, and he was wise enough to discount his lack of experience.

“I am only an apprentice, as you might say, Mr. Grillage, and many a man with my equipment, or more, is still carrying a transit,” he said, after a momentary pause for the breath-catching. “But I’m going to leave it with you. If you think I am equal to it, I can only say that I’ll do my level best not to disappoint you.”

The big man’s laugh was like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge.

“You’re modest, David, and that isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a young fellow in his beginnings. But I’ve been keeping cases on you, and I go a good deal on what Grimsby says. He gives you a good send-off; says you know the engineering game, and can keep your head and handle men. The Timanyoni job won’t ask for much more, unless it’s a little of this loyalty you talk about. If you need an older head, you’ll have Plegg, who’s been first assistant on the job since it began. Plegg has the age and the experience, and you can lean on him for everything but initiative—which is the one thing he hasn’t got. Now we’ll get down to the lay-out,” and he took a huge roll of blue-prints from its case and began a brittle outlining of the realignment project in the Hophra Mountains.

David Vallory, still a trifle dazed by the suddenness and magnitude of the promotion, bent over the drawings and became a sponge to soak up the details. In the construction of the Nevada Short Line over the Hophras in the day of the great gold discoveries, haste had been the watch-word of the builders. With the golden lure ahead to put a premium upon speed, the engineers had eliminated cuts, fills and tunnels, so far as possible, and had made the line climb by a series of reversed curves and heavy grades to the surmounting of the obstacle mountain range at Hophra Pass.

Now, since the Short Line had become an integral part of the far-reaching P. S-W. system, a campaign of distance-shortening and grade-reducing had been inaugurated. There were bridges to be built, hills to be cut through, tunnels to be driven. Powder Can, a mining town nestling in the shadow of the mountains, was the center of the activities, but the work extended for some miles in either direction from the town, with the heaviest of the hill-cutting and tunnel-driving climaxing in the big bore which was to form the needle’s eye for the threading of the mountain range.

Again modestly discounting his lack of experience, David Vallory was doubtful of his ability to plan and carry out such a vast undertaking from its inception. But the trail was already broken for him, and he had only to walk in the technical footsteps of his predecessors. And with a good assistant who had been familiar with the work from the first, this should be comparatively easy.

“I’m your man, Mr. Grillage,” he said, after the maps and plans had been duly considered. “I’ll lean on Plegg, as you suggest, and give you the best there is in me. I’ll say frankly that I don’t believe I’m big enough yet to swing a thing like this as a new proposition. But with the lay-out all made and the work in progress, I ought to be able to pick it up and carry it to the finish.”

“That’s up to you,” said the big man shortly. “You may take this set of blue-prints with you and check yourself into the job on your way to Colorado. Grimsby says you’re good for the engineering end of it, and I’m taking his word for that. But there is another angle that you mustn’t lose sight of. It is a big job, and there were half a dozen bidders. We had to cut mighty close to get in, and any bad breaks on our part are going to shove the profits over to the other side of the books and write ’em down in red ink.”