“Say, Larry; what do you know about this!” he exclaimed, staring at the face of his wrist watch. “By the great horn spoon—it’s five o’clock! five o’clock in the afternoon!”
It was the day after the day of trampings, and old mother Nature had been taking her toll with a vengeance for the drafts made on her in the long hike to and through and around and beyond the valley with a doggish name. Straight through from a little past midnight the two hikers had slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, and even now they both felt that they could stand still more of it.
“Ah-yah!” gaped Larry, matching Dick’s yawn. “Say, Dickie; somebody must have put us to bed last night. I sure don’t recollect doing any of it myself.”
“If anybody should be interested enough to ask, I’ll say that was some tramp we had yesterday; s-o-m-e tramp!” Dick put in.
“Uh-huh,” Larry agreed. “You’re talking in mouthfuls. Wonder if the news we brought did any good?”
“Here’s hoping. But everything seems mighty quiet around here now—if we’re supposed to be doing any hustling. I don’t even hear the compressor running.”
After they crawled into their clothes and turned out, the quietness of the camp was fully explained. First, they saw that the work in the big rock cutting just above the camp had apparently been abandoned—as it was, temporarily—and a track passage around the obstacle had been obtained by means of a hastily built wooden trestle standing, as the Overland Central trestle did at the point of that road’s entrance into the canyon, with its bents in the river bed.
Over this trestle the track had already been laid; and while they were staring at the miracle of accomplishment which had been wrought in less than a double circuit of the clock-hands, the 717, with Brannigan at the throttle, came storming up the canyon, pushing two flat-cars loaded high with cross-ties—pushing them right along, too, for there was time only for a hand wave from the little Irishman before the two-car train shrilled around the curving trestle and disappeared to sight and sound.
“Hooray!” cried Dick, swinging his cap; “that means that we’re still in the ring and going strong! Let’s get a bite to eat and then go on ahead and report for duty.”
Luckily for them there was a cook left at the nearly deserted hard-rock camp, and the “bite” to which they presently sat down transformed itself into a hearty meal, as it had need to be, since it took the place of the skipped supper of the night before, and the breakfast and dinner of the day through which they had slept.