“Pritty good fur an ould soldier.... An’ it’s news I hear of yez, me boy.”
“What news?”
“Shure yez hed a boost. Gineral Lodge hisself wor tellin’ Grady, the boss, that yez had been given charge of Number Ten.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“I’m dom’ glad to hear ut,” declared the Irishman. “But yez hev a hell of a job in thot Number Ten.”
“So I’ve been told. What do you know about it, Casey?”
“Shure ut ain’t much. A fri’nd of mine was muxin’ mortor over there. An’ he sez whin the crick was dry ut hed a bottom, but whin wet ut shure hed none.”
“Then I have got a job on my hands,” replied Neale, grimly.
Those days it took the work-train several hours to reach the end of the rails. Neale rode by some places with a profound satisfaction in the certainty that but for him the track would not yet have been spiked there. Construction was climbing fast into the hills. He wondered when and where would be the long-looked-for meeting of the rails connecting East with West. Word had drifted over the mountains that the Pacific division of the construction was already in Utah.
At the camp Colonel Dillon offered Neale an escort of troopers out to Number Ten, but Neale decided he could make better time alone. There had been no late sign of the Indians in that locality and he knew both the road and the trail.