After coupling the free ends of their wire coils to Smith’s terminal, the two boys began to search for a place where the canyon wall could be scaled. That, in itself, was something of a problem. In a toilsome hike of half a mile up-stream they found nothing like a trail up which they might hope to be able to carry the coils of wire. Moreover, distance was a prime factor in their plan. They couldn’t afford to waste wire in long detours.
“There’s only one thing for it,” said Larry. “I’m going to shin up through that crevice we passed a few minutes ago, carrying the light coil of rope. Then I’ll lower the line from the top of the cliff over the terminal, and you can send the stuff up to me a piece at a time.”
This programme was carried out successfully, and after a half-hour’s hard labor the first step in the arduous plan was a step accomplished. From the cliff summit the back-country outlook was not so formidable. They found themselves standing upon a high plateau, thickly wooded and hilly, to be sure, but presenting no great difficulties to progress, so far as they could determine.
“One good thing,” Dick commented, as they were munching a mid-afternoon lunch on the cliff top; “these blessed wire coils are going to keep on growing lighter as we go along. Makes me feel sort of Pollyanna glad—that does. Gee! but that last one was a pull up the cliff! I don’t see how you ever managed the first alone.”
“It had to be managed; that’s all,” said Larry, who was of those who can always do what they have to do. “Like to have worn all the skin off my hands, though, I’ll admit.”
With the hunger clamor quieted they took a compass bearing, shouldered their burdens, and for a solid hour trudged away through the mountain solitude, uncoiling the wire as they went and leaving a double trail of it behind them. Smaller and smaller grew the coils, until at last, as nearly as they could estimate, there were only a few hundred yards left. Dick, never very strong on directions and localities, thought they were lost; but Larry still held on grimly.
“It can’t be very much farther,” he insisted, “and I’m sure we’re heading right. If the wire will only hold out——”
They were climbing a little ridge as he said it, and the hollow coils had dwindled to a mere nucleus in each. Dick was a few steps in the lead, and as he topped the ridge he dropped his handful of wire and flung himself flat.
What they saw from the ridge top was instructive, to say the least of it. Directly below them lay the open valley with the Overland Central material piles heaped in the center of it. Out of the valley to their left they saw the gulch through which they had entered the day before, and through which they had made their escape in the night.
When they had last passed through it the gulch had been merely a part of the primeval wilderness. But now as much as they could see of it was alive with an army of laborers fiercely at work laying down a railroad track. Teams in an endless procession were delivering cross-ties and rails from the piles in the valley; and off to the north they could see black smoke rising above the trees betokening the presence of a locomotive, or a steam shovel—or both.