“You want to forget that you’re the general manager’s son, Dickie; that doesn’t get you anywhere at all out here in the wild and woolly. But as for that, you can bet your father knows all about what’s going on up here; and I’ll bet he isn’t leaving a thing undone to stop this O. C. pirate business. Our job is just to stick it out and beat ’em fairly.”
“Yes; and get shot with a rock doing it!” Dick grumbled. “Thank goodness, there’s the tunnel; let’s run for it before they turn loose on us again.”
Around the curve ahead lay the present “end-of-track” of the Short Line. Viewed from a distance it looked more like a snow-break than a tunnel or the entrance to one. A heavy plank fence guarded it on the river side, and this was buttressed with piles of loose stone. This plank bulwark was not a snow fence, however; it was a protection against flying rocks from the blasting on the other side of the canyon.
To facilitate the removal of spoil—the tunnel diggings—the track had been laid directly up to the mouth of the black hole in the mountain side; but this track was now empty. Off at one side, and also sheltered by the heavy plank bulkhead, was the shed which held the air-compressor and its steam boiler.
Goldrick, the young engineer who was in charge of the tunnel driving, was waiting for the boys when they came up with the surveying instrument. Taking advantage of a lull in the blasting across the river, a few lines were run; and after the stakes were driven to mark them, the two boys were at liberty to take shelter in the tunnel—which they promptly did when the firing recommenced on the slope opposite and above.
“Bing!—Sounds a good bit like a sure-enough battle,” said Dick, as a hurtling stone missile slammed against the outside of the stout wooden bulkhead screening the tunnel portal.
But Larry Donovan, looking up at the tunnel roof and its rather light timbering, was thinking of something else.
“Say, Dick; it’s a pity we lost that car-load of tunnel timbering in the river,” he broke in, referring to an accident of the day before in which a supply of braces and planking for shoring the tunnel had been derailed and the timbers swept away in the swift flood of the Tourmaline. “I don’t like the looks of this clay overhead. You’d say it wouldn’t take very much to bring it down on us.”
The dangerous “looks” were apparent enough, even to an untrained eye. For the first ten or fifteen feet of its plunge into the mountain the tunnel excavation ran through clay mixed with broken rock. Of course, it was the intention to timber this part of it solidly; but with the material still lacking, the tunnel drivers were merely doing the best they could, propping the shaky roof temporarily with such braces as could be had, and going on with their work.