“They’ve done it!” Penny cried jubilantly. “Now it shouldn’t be long before we get a wire connection with the outside world!”
Immediately telephone company men seized the flexible cable, anchoring it solidly. Heavy cables then were drawn across and made fast, permitting a courageous lineman in a bosun’s chair to work high above the turbulent river.
“If that cable should break, he’d be lost!” Louise said with a shudder. “It makes me jumpy to watch him.”
Fearlessly the man accomplished his task, suspending a temporary emergency telephone line. Cable splicers promptly carried the ends of the new cable to terminal boxes.
So absorbed was Penny in watching the task that for a time she forgot her own urgent need of a message wire. But as she observed the men talking over a test phone, the realization suddenly came to her that a through wire had been established west from Red Valley.
“Lou, they’ve done it!” she exclaimed. “The wire connection is made!”
“It does look that way.”
“If only I could use that test set to get my news story through to Dad!”
“Fat chance!”
“I’d still be the first to send out the story!” Penny went on excitedly. “It will do no harm to ask anyhow.”