Then Dr. Gitney was sent for and came.
“Your chief has mountain fever, too,” said the medical attendant to Tom, after stepping outside the tent.
“How long will it take them to get well?” asked Wade anxiously.
“Weeks! Hard to say,” replied the physician vaguely.
“Weeks!” groaned Tom Reade. “And the camp now in charge of Jack Rutter, who’s a fine workman but no leader! Doc Gitney doesn’t know it, but he has sentenced the S.B. & L. railroad to death!”
It was a trying situation. The cub engineer felt it keenly, for he had set his heart on seeing the S.B. & L. win out over its rival.
Then, too, all in a flash, the memory of ’Gene Black’s treachery to his employers came back to the mind of Tom Reade.
CHAPTER XII
FROM CUB TO ACTING CHIEF
Tom didn’t sleep that night. He sat by, silently, in the big tent, nursing the patient as Dr. Gitney directed.
In the morning, at five, Matt Rice came. Tom gladly surrendered the post to him and took a scant hour of deep slumber on the bare ground outside.