"Agnew says it will take a hundred cars."
"That's not far out of the way. On flat cars you won't average much over ten yards to the car, will you, Morris?"
Like two wary gamblers Callahan and the chief of construction on the mountain lines coldly eyed each other, Glover standing pat and the general superintendent disinclined through many experiences to call.
"I'm not doing the talking now," said Callahan at length with a sidewise glance, "but if you get a hundred cars of rock into that hole by twelve o'clock to-night—not to speak of laying steel—you can have my job, old man."
"Then look up another right away, for I'll have the rock in the river long before that. Now don't rubber, but get after the men and the drills——"
"The drills?"
"I said the whole outfit."
"Would it be proper to ask what you are going to drill?"
"Perfectly proper." Glover pointed again to the shelving wall across the river. "It will save time and freight to tumble the Cat's Paw into the river—there's ten times the rock we need right there—I can dump a thousand yards where we need it in thirty seconds after I get my powder in. That will give us our foundation and your roadmasters can lay a track over it in six hours that will carry your fruit—I wouldn't recommend it for dining-cars, but it will do for plums and cherries. And by the way, Morris," called Glover—Blood already twenty feet away was scrambling down the path—"if Ed Smith's got any giant powder borrow sticks enough to spring thirty or forty holes with, will you? I've got plenty of black up at Pilot. You can order it down by the time we are ready to blast."
In another hour the cañon looked as if a hive of bees were swarming on the Cat's Paw. With shovels, picks, bars, hammers, and drills, hearty in miners' boots and pied in woollen shirts the first of Ed Smith's men were clambering into place. The field telegraph had been set up on the bench above the point: every few moments a new batch of irrigation men appeared stringing up the ledge, and with the roadmasters as lieutenants, Glover, on the apex of the low spur of the mountain, taking reports and giving orders, surveyed his improvised army.