Three brief minutes in the tent of the chief sufficed for the giving of the alarm, and Larry’s heart swelled with—well, not exactly with envy, perhaps, but at any rate with eager emulation and the hope that he, too, might some day rise to such heights of efficiency, when he saw how quickly the chief grasped the situation and how capably he met it.
A few quietly given orders to his assistants and to the foremen crowding to the tent flap started the checkmating move, which was simple enough now that the warning had been given. With every man in the well-disciplined force falling into line, the graders were sent forward at once to take immediate possession of the threatened point in the canyon, the obvious counter-move being to have the Short Line grade established and occupied before the Overland Central could make its capturing dash across the river.
After the orders had been given and the men were hustling the preparations for the forward move, Chief Ackerman turned to the pair of leg-weary scouts.
“You fellows have done well—mighty well—for a couple of first-year cubs,” he said in hearty commendation. “Now go ahead and tell me all about it.”
Larry let Dick do the telling, contenting himself with producing the note-book with its carefully penciled record. As in the chase of the runaway engine, when there was credit to be given, Dickie Maxwell did the square thing.
“If you make any report of this to headquarters, Mr. Ackerman,” he wound up, “I wish you fix it so as to put Larry in where he belongs. He made me go on when I thought it wasn’t any sort of use. If it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t have had anything to report but that survey on this side of the river, and——”
“Oh, let up, will you?” Larry growled in sheepish confusion. “You talk a heap too much, Dick, when you get started.” And then to the chief, in still more confusion: “I hope you won’t do anything that Dick says, Mr. Ackerman. He was in it just exactly as much as I was. He knows it, too, but he’s always throwing off that way on me.”
Mr. Ackerman smiled and didn’t say what he would or would not do. But a few days later, after the report had gone to the headquarters in Brewster, General Manager Maxwell tossed the chief’s opened letter across his office desk to his brother-in-law, Mr. William Starbuck, who happened to be with him at the moment.
“You see what Ackerman says,” he remarked. “It seems that we have won the first round in the tussle for the right-of-way in Tourmaline Canyon, and that we owe the winning chiefly to that Donovan boy—you remember him; son of John Donovan the crippled locomotive engineer. I told the boy he’d have to show what was in him if we gave him a chance on the new work, and he seems to be doing it. There’s good timber in that Donovan stock.”