“Oh, I don’t know,” he evaded; “I’ve always been messing around with tools and machinery and things. And it wasn’t anything, anyhow. You folks inside there had to have air, and have it quick—any baby would know that; and there was nothing to do but to pile in and give it to you. So we did it.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” laughed Goldrick; “nothing to it, at all; no brains needed to try pushing the pipe through with the engine when the hammer wouldn’t drive it any farther, or to invent the air-brake scheme when the engine got knocked out! You’re too blooming modest to draw your own breath, Larry!”
“That’s all right,” said Larry, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “All I’m asking is that you—and you, too, Dick—don’t paste it on too thick when you report to Mr. Ackerman. I don’t want him, or Mr. Maxwell, to get the idea that I’m understudying for a movie-stunt-puller on this job. I’m here to earn a Donovan chance, if I can, and the spot-light doesn’t agree with me; makes me sort of sick at my stomach when I get too much of it.”
Quite naturally, since a stunt-puller’s word goes as it lies, as you might say, both Dick and the young engineer promised to let Larry down easy in the matter of report-making.
Nevertheless, that same evening, just as the boys were about to roll themselves in the blankets in their bunk tent at the Pine Gulch camp, the telegraph operator came over from his shack office with a freshly written message which he gave to Larry. It was dated at Brewster, and this is what it said:
“To Lawrence Donovan,
“Care H. Ackerman, Chf. Engr.,
“Pine Gulch.
“Congratulations upon your good work at Tunnel Number Two. The Short Line Company owes you something and it will pay its obligation. You have your chance and you are making good.
“R. Maxwell,
“General Manager.”