Before they reached the first gang of track-layers they saw that the work had stopped as suddenly as if the entire Short Line army had had a stroke of paralysis. Tools had been dropped and the men were standing or sitting around in idle bunches, some filling and lighting their pipes, others staring after the rapidly disappearing train on the rival railroad.
“What’s the matter? What are you all quitting for?” Larry snapped at the first group of idlers they came to.
A big Italian spike-driver answered for himself and the others:
“Can’t work-a widout da boss: dey take-a da ’ole push—arrest-a dem—say dey will arrest-a us if we don’t t’row down da hammer.”
Breathlessly the two boys hastened from gang to gang, finding the same conditions everywhere. Not only every member of the engineering staff—excepting only themselves—had been taken, but all the foremen as well. It was a clean sweep of every man in authority. Burkett, one of the carpenters on the bridge-building gang, told them the brief story of the wholesale arrest.
“It was a sheriff’s posse,” he said; “they had a warrant big enough to cover the whole world—made out against John Doe and Richard Roe and others—you know how they make ’em read when they don’t put in the real names. Near as I could get at it from listenin’ in, the charge was contempt o’ court, and they was all cited to appear before Judge Somebody ’r other way up yonder at Burnt Canyon. There ain’t a boss of any kind left on the job; nary a single one.”
“It’s a trick!” Dick raved; “a low-down, dirty trick to stop our work! They can kill all the time they want to with that train of theirs between here and Burnt Canyon, and goodness only knows when our folks can give bail and get loose and come back!”
It was then that Larry Donovan’s eighteen years took on at least ten more.
“We’re only ‘cubs,’ Dick, but it looks as if we rank everybody else on this job right now,” he said slowly. “We’ve got to buck up and do something. Will you stand by me?”