This very necessary preliminary attended to, they set out to follow the lately laid track up the canyon. At every step they marveled. There had been a great deal of hurry work done during the summer on the race up the Tourmaline, but nothing to equal this drive which had gone on while they slept. “Miraculous” was the only word that fitted. In the short time that had elapsed the track had been carried around the canyon obstacles and up to and into Yellow Dog Park, and the rush—judging from the number of material trains that passed them as they hurried forward—was still on.
Among the sandstone hills in the circular valley they came upon the building army, augmented now by every available man on the large construction force. In the thick of the work turmoil the boys found their chief.
“Glad to see you fellows,” said the driver of men briskly. “Did you have your sleep out?”
“We sure did,” Dick grinned.
“All right; we’re calling it a battle, and I’ll make you two my orderlies. Dick, you may run up ahead and see how the supply of cross-ties is holding out. Report to Goldrick if it’s running short. Larry, you chase around until you find Smith, the wire chief, and tell him we’ve got to have those arc-lights in commission within an hour. Then find Lonergan and see if his carbide flares are ready to be distributed. Skip for it—both of you!”
That was the introduction to a night’s work that both Dick and Larry thought they should never live long enough to forget. Almost as if by magic, it seemed, electric wires were strung, and with the coming of darkness, arc-lights and carbide flares blazed out all along the line. Under an illumination that was little short of daylight the gangs of track-layers, working now at the close of a twenty-four-hour shift in relays of two hours on and one hour off for rest, sprang to their task. Like clock-work the material trains came up from the supply camps below, cross-ties and rails, spikes and fish-plates, bolts and nuts were distributed, and the incessant clanging of the spike mauls was like the din of a busy blacksmith shop.
It was during this night of tremendous toil—the second night for the men who were driving the job—that a track-laying record was broken for that entire section of the West. Fortunately, the ground between the sandstone buttes was comparatively level and but little grading was needed. But for that matter, the “leveling” could be done later by reworking crews. The need of the moment was for speed; for the construction of a usable track of some sort—any sort; and under the combined efforts of a master mind and many tireless and skilful hands the usable track was materializing by leaps and bounds.
“I’m telling you, Larry, that this is one something to stick down in your little old note-book!” Dick exclaimed enthusiastically, in one of the few breathing spells their work of order-carrying permitted. “I wouldn’t have missed seeing this night’s work, and being a part of it, for anything under the sun.”
“Here too,” Larry agreed. “It’s great! And doesn’t the chief stand out like the biggest man you ever saw? My heavens, Dick—if I thought I could ever grow a brain big enough to handle a job like this——”
“Of course you can—and will!” Dick asserted, with comradely loyalty. Then to a grimy-faced lad, one of the spike distributors, who came running up: “Right-o: what is it now, Jimmie Dowling?”