It was plainly apparent that the short surveying stakes they were using were no good at all in the shale, so they pushed on up-stream to the nearest river-fringing aspen grove, and with their belt axes cut longer ones. In driving these they found no bottom to the slippery mass; also, they remarked that every blow of the driving ax-head started fresh shale rivulets which wriggled and crept and crawled, and threatened never to come to rest.
It was early in the July day when they began the job of resetting the grade stakes across the short half-mile of the slide, and they had been hard at it all day, when with the sun dipping behind the western mountain, they came wading back to the temporary camp pitched just below the scene of the steam shovel digging. And for the day’s work of the big shovel there was little to show save a slight depression in the shale within the immediate swing of its steam-driven arm.
After supper there was a council of war held around the camp fire in front of the engineers’ tent, at which the two boys were interested listeners. After having made a careful examination of the new obstacle, the chief of construction had summoned his three assistants to discuss the best means of attacking it.
“It’s my notion that bulkheading is the only thing,” summed up Goldrick, who had been directing the steam-shovel operations during the day. “We’re not going to get anywhere at all unless we put in a retaining wall of some sort. The stuff slides in faster than we can take it out, and when it starts there doesn’t seem to be any end to it. The entire surface of the shale gets in motion as far up the slope as you can see.”
In this opinion, Jones and Hathaway, the other assistants, concurred, and after the matter had been thoroughly threshed out, the chief issued his orders.
“All right, Goldrick; bulkhead it if you have to. Time is the main object, rather than expense, just now. The O. C. is coming on fast with its track-laying, and if we’re delayed here very long, it’s a lost race for us. The pile-driver is at Pine Gulch. Better wire to-night and get it, and your bulkheading material, on the way. The thing to be done is to get across this place quickly. Drive it for every man in your gang and every pound of steam you can carry. I’m going down to Red Butte in the morning, but I’ll try to be back by Thursday. It’s up to you, Goldrick, shove it!”
For some time after they had gone to bed the two boys lay awake, talking about the new obstacle which was handicapping their force in the great race for the Little Ophir sweepstakes.
“If it isn’t one thing it’s another,” said Dick Maxwell gloomily. “First the O. C. tries to steal our right-of-way; then it floods us out and shoots rocks at us. And now, when we’ve earned a little more room to work in, here comes this avalanche of snake scales that we can’t cross. If anybody should ask me, I’d say we’re hoodooed!”
“Oh, no; nothing like that,” was the quiet answer from the opposite cot “That’s just one of the things that makes the engineering fight the greatest game in the world. You’re always up against something that yells for the best there is in you to beat it.”
Silence for a few minutes, and then Dick said: