“Nothing doing, son. It would cost me my summer’s job if your general manager father ever heard of it. But you may take this coil of light line up there, you two, if you think you’re good for the climb and the tote.”
Lashing the coil of light rope to a carrying stick so that they could share the load, Dick and Larry “hit the hill,” making a detour through a small side gulch to come at the cliff summit from the rear. The scrambling ascent accomplished, they found themselves at an elevation commanding an extended view across the canyon to the northward.
A little way back from the cliff edge two men, with a pine-tree for a snubbing stake, were slowly paying out a rope at the end of which the spider-like bracket setter was dangling; and, lying on his stomach at the brink, a third man was watching the descent and calling out directions to the “anchor” man at the tree.
“Makes a fellow feel sort of creepy, doesn’t it?” said Dick, as they took a cautious look over the edge into the gorge below, and Larry grinned at him.
“Going to take back your brag about setting the next one?” he jibed good-naturedly.
“I don’t take back anything,” Dick asserted stoutly; adding: “But if I was only bluffing, it would be safe enough. Jack Smith wouldn’t come within a thousand miles of letting me try.”
Larry squatted with his back to a tree. There was nothing further to do until the bracket placers should move on to a new position.
“I’ve been thinking about that question you asked when you woke me up this morning,” he said; “about what the Overland Central people will do now that we’ve beaten them to it in the canyon.”
“Strikes me there isn’t much of anything for them to do,” Dick countered. “I’d say they’re knocked out.”
“Don’t fool yourself that way. Big corporations don’t give up so easily. They’ve already spent a lot of money building their line down from Burnt Canyon, and they are not going to throw all that money away, not by a long shot.”