CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I.[Young Van engages a Cook]1
II.[Where the Money came From]22
III.[At Mr. Carhart’s Camp]37
IV.[Jack Flagg sees Stars]66
V.[What They found at the Water-hole]97
VI.[The Road to Total Wreck]138
VII.[The Spirit of the Job]185
VIII.[Shots—and a Scouting Party]219
IX.[A Show-down]246
X.[What took Place at Red Hills]293

ILLUSTRATIONS

[‘There,’ he cried, ... ‘there, boys! That means Red Hills or bust’]Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
[‘It’s all I have a right to give anybody’]74
[‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much work?’]80
[‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind of a cook are you?’]98
[Wonderfully they held the pace]114
[They went on in this way for nearly an hour]120
[‘Look here, Tiffany,’ Carhart began, ‘something’s going to happen to this man Peet’]142
[‘You go back to your quarters’]208
[... this trestle structure which was slowly crawling, like some monster centipede, across the sands of the La Paz]240
[The cigarette dropped from Antonio’s unnerved fingers]244
[Charlie had not raised his revolver,—the muzzle still rested easily on the sill,—but it was pointing straight at Jack Flagg’s heart]310

[THE ROAD-BUILDERS]

[CHAPTER I]
YOUNG VAN ENGAGES A COOK

The S. & W. was hoping some day to build a large station with a steel and glass trainshed at Sherman. Indeed, a side elevation of the structure, drawn to scale and framed in black walnut, had hung for a number of years in the private office, away down east, of President Daniel De Reamer. But that was to come in the day when Sherman should be a metropolis; at present the steel of which it was to be constructed still lay deep in the earth, unblasted, unsmelted, and unconverted; and the long, very dirty train which, at the time this narrative opens, was waiting to begin its westward journey, lay exposed to the rays of what promised to be, by noon, the hottest sun the spring had so far known. The cars were of an old, ill-ventilated sort, and the laborers, who were packed within them like cattle in a box-car, had shed coats and even shirts, and now sat back, and gasped and grumbled and fanned themselves with their caps, and steadily lost interest in life.