“Round these men up as quickly as you can, Jimmie, and bring them here,” he ordered. “Run for it!”
The boy ran, and in a few minutes the listed men began to drift in, some half-dozen of them altogether. Once more Larry climbed into the breach.
“You men know what has been done to us, and why it was done,” was the way he started out. “We don’t know much about this law business, but we do know that the chief and all our people believe we have a right to cross this mining claim. The whole thing is meant to stop us; to delay us so that the O. C. can get its track into Little Ophir ahead of ours. The question is, are we going to let the O. C. put it all over us this way, or not?”
Burkett, the carpenter, acted as spokesman for the little group of picked men.
“We’re with you chaps, and the company, of course. I can boss that trestle into shape if you say the word. But I don’t know how the men will be taking it. You know how they are when the bosses are gone.”
Larry swallowed hard and played his last card.
“We’re only ‘cubs’, Dick Maxwell and I, and what we don’t know about building a railroad would fill the biggest book that was ever printed. But it’ll go mighty hard with us if we can’t manage to keep this job going for just one day. Chase out and round the men up into one big bunch, and let me—I—er—let me talk to them.”
“Whoop!” shouted Dick joyously, as the delegation filed out of the tent. “Can you do it, Larry?”
Larry’s breath was coming in gulps.
“I’d rather be shot than try it, Dick, and that’s the fact!” he gasped. “You know how I was in the school debates—never could get a thing right end foremost when I got on my feet. Most likely I’ll make a ghastly muddle of it. Suppose you take that part of it.”