Two minutes after he had delivered the blue-print to the waiting assistant on the grade, and had shuffled off with the empty water bucket, Larry, the battered hat restored to its sleeping owner and his own cap recovered, was at Dick’s elbow.
“Come, quick!” he whispered; “we haven’t a minute to lose!” and at the end of a heart-breaking, wind-cutting scramble up the steep ridge they were once more in touch with their telephone line.
The answer to Larry’s call came quickly, and between gasps he told the story of their discovery. The reply, which came from Smith, was an order from headquarters. Larry repeated it for Dick as he was disconnecting the field set from the wires.
“Our job’s done,” he announced. “We’re to bring this field set in with us and leave the wire for a couple of the men to reel up to-morrow, dragging the ends back with us a piece so that our men won’t have to show themselves to that crowd down below. When we get in, we’re to report at once to Mr. Ackerman at the new ‘front.’”
Dark as it was, the return over the hills of the plateau was merely a bit of routine. All they had to do was to follow their wires, like cave explorers retracing a twine trail, and by a late bed-time they had reached a little widening in the canyon of the Tourmaline where the Short Line chief had established his new headquarters.
The sober-faced chief’s eyes were twinkling when the two boys finished telling the story of the afternoon’s adventures.
“You two fellows are getting altogether too much notoriety,” he said, with what might have been taken—but for the eye-twinkling—for grave severity. And then: “Whose idea was it?—this wire-scouting scheme?”
“Larry’s,” said Dick promptly, before Larry could open his mouth.
“I’m charging it up to both of you. As it turns out, it is exactly what we needed to know; though if I had been here, I shouldn’t have allowed you two ‘cubs’ to undertake anything so full of risk. And you shouldn’t have undertaken it without orders. For your breach of discipline I’m going to send you ahead with the instrumentmen to-morrow. Maybe that will keep you out of mischief for a while.”
“Did he mean it?” Larry asked, a few minutes later when they were piling into a couple of bunks at the back of the newly erected engineers’ shack, “about disciplining us?”