It was a unique task, this location of a railroad route in the night-time. But, aided by the bright moonlight and the glare of lamps for signals, it became not only possible of performance, but perfectly practicable.
Slowly the line of stakes stretched out, following, with almost minute exactness, the route surveyed in the afternoon.
Indeed, there was room in the gap but for one railroad, and the second survey had, of necessity, to take practically the same course as the first.
As Dannie walked along in the company of the head chainman, it became apparent to him that these men did not know of the survey made by the corps of engineers in the afternoon; much less did they know of his work of obliteration. The serious results of that work began also to weigh more deeply on him. A hundred questions arose in his mind. If the line of stakes set in the afternoon were still standing, would these men be here setting theirs to-night? And when they learned that a prior survey had been made, what would they do? And if any one should ever know that he, Dannie Pickett, had destroyed that line of stakes, what would happen then to him? And of what avail was it, anyway, to wipe out the marks of one location only to have the stakes of another spring up in their places scarcely an hour later? But with all his questioning he could decide upon but one thing, and that was that under any circumstances he must keep his own counsel and reveal nothing.
At last the end of the gap was reached, but the railroad route was located for yet another thousand feet down the north slope of the hill.
“There is plenty of room here,” said the transitman, finally; “there is no object in going farther to-night. We’re safely through the gap. We’re first through the gap, and the gap route is ours by right of prior location.”
Dannie recalled the exultant declaration, made under similar circumstances, by the engineer who conducted the afternoon survey. Surely the plot was thickening.
“You might step down the road a bit, John,” added the transitman, “while we are getting the things together here, and see if you can find any trace of the D. V. and E. people. Nicholson should have ended his survey somewhere near here last evening if he had good luck.”
Ten minutes later John returned and reported that he had found the D. V. and E. stakes about three hundred feet farther down the road, where the party had evidently stopped for the night.