“We’ll leave him to Mr. Chambers. Give Charlie instructions to strengthen his night guard. Some men will be sent back to guard the second and third wells.”
Young Van involuntarily passed his hand across his eyes.
“I’m afraid I’m not much good,” he said slowly. “I didn’t grasp this situation very well. It’s rather a new phase of engineering for me. We seem to be plunging all of a sudden into tactics and strategy.”
“That’s about the size of it, Gus,” the chief responded. He had exchanged his old straw hat for a sombrero. His spurs jingled as he moved. There was a sparkle in his eye and a new sort of military alertness about his figure. He paused at the tent entrance, and looked back. “That’s about the size of it, Gus,” he repeated with a half smile. “And I’m afraid I rather like it.”
“Well, good-by. I’ll start the men right along after you.”
Carhart mounted his horse, Dimond followed his example, and the two rode away in the direction of the La Paz bridge. And ten hours later, at five in the morning, a line of armed horsemen—a long-nosed young man with the light of a pirate soul in his eyes riding at the head, an athletic pile-inspector and a college-bred rodman bringing up the rear—rode westward after him.
Troubles had been coming other than singly on “mile 109.” Jack Flagg, with a force which, while smaller than Flint’s, was made up of well-armed and well-paid desperadoes, had seized the ridge which shut in the La Paz Valley on the west, had pitched camp, erected rude intrenchments of loose stone, and stopped for the moment all work on the mile-long trestle. So much John Flint had set down in the note which the wizened one had delivered to Carhart. The next adventure befell on the night after the departure of the wizened one; and it brought out the ugly strain in the opera bouffe business of these wild railroading days.
Antonio, the watchman, sat on the edge of the eastern abutment and dangled his feet. He was so drowsy that he even stopped rolling cigarettes. He had chosen a comfortable seat, where a pile of timbers afforded a rest for his back. To be sure, there was the possibility of rolling off into the water and sand if he should really fall asleep; but elsewhere he would be exposed to the searching eyes of the engineer in charge, and those eyes were very searching indeed. He was thinking, in a dreamy way, of what he would do on the Sunday, with his week’s pay in his pocket and the village of La Paz but twelve miles away.