"So Fred's your understudy, is he? Well, I've got one, too. I'll show him to you after a while."
They were walking back over the ties toward the half-buried 195. The ten-wheeler was on its side in the ditch, nuzzling the opposite bank of a low cutting. Dawson had already divided his men: half of them to place the huge jack-beams and outriggers of the self-contained steam lifting machine to insure its stability, and the other half to trench under the fallen engine and to adjust the chain slings for the hitch.
"It's a pretty long reach, Fred," said the superintendent. "Going to try it from here?"
"Best place," said the reticent one shortly.
Lidgerwood was looking at his watch.
"Williams will be due here before long with a special from Copah. I don't want to hold him up," he remarked.
"Thirty minutes?" inquired the draftsman, without taking mind or eye off his problem.
"Oh, yes; forty or fifty, maybe."
"All right, I'll be out of the way," was the quiet rejoinder.
"Yes, you will!" was McCloskey's ironical comment, when the draftsman had gone around to the other side of the great crane.