“No,” he replied impatiently, “I don’t know anything about the new railroad, an’ I don’t know as I care.”
“Well,” continued Gabriel, leaning contemplatively on the handle of his hoe, “ef Abner Pickett gits what it’s wuth to a railroad to run through that gap, he can afford to wear a starched shirt onct in a w’ile on a Sunday.”
“Gran’pap wears the kind o’ shirts that suits him,” replied Dannie, indignantly, “an’ it’s nobody’s business but his own.”
“Of course! Of course!” chuckled Gabriel. “As ol’ Isra’l Pidgin use to say, ‘Blood’s thicker’n water; an’ ye can’t thin it by stirrin’ of it up.’”
Dannie was tired and disheartened. He looked away toward the gap and wished, with all his heart, that he might see Gran’pap coming up the road toward home. Some one, indeed, was coming from out the shadows of the rocks, but it was not Gran’pap. It was a small, black-whiskered man, carrying an engineer’s transit. When he was well out from the mouth of the gap he set up his instrument and adjusted it, and peered through the telescope, first back into the shadows of the cañon, and then ahead toward the graveyard, into the sacred enclosure of which the flagman, with his signal pole, was already advancing.
“Look, Gabriel!” exclaimed Dannie, “look! What are they doing?”
Gabriel gave a quick glance toward the gap.
“It’s the new railroad,” he said. “Sure as eternity, it’s the new railroad!”
The chainmen were now in sight, measuring off the distances. The flagman, standing in the very centre of the graveyard and looking back to the transitman, was holding his pole on the ground and balancing it with his hands to keep it plumb.
Gabriel had dropped his hoe, Dannie had thrust his hands savagely into his trousers pockets, and both stood gazing with wide eyes on the animated scene.