Mrs. Whitney wondered why, if Mr. Glover were really a competent man,

he could not have held his position as chief engineer of the system,

but Doctor Lanning explained that frequently Western men of real talent

were wholly lacking in ambition and preferred a free-and-easy life to

one of constant responsibility; others, again, drank--and this

suggestion opened a discussion as to whether Western men could possibly

do more drinking than Eastern men, and transact business at all.

While the discussion proceeded there came a telegram from Glover

telling Doctor Lanning that the blast would be made about seven

o'clock. Preparations to start were completed as the company rose from

the table, and Gertrude Brock and Marie were urged to join the party.

Marie consented, but Gertrude had a new book and would not leave it,

and when the others started she joined her father and Judge Saltzer,

her father's counsellor, now with them, who were dining more leisurely

at their own table.

Bucks met the doctor and his party at the head of the cañon and took

them to the high ledge across the river, where they had been brought by

Glover in the morning. In the cañon it was already dark. Men were

eating around campfires, and in the narrow strip of eastern sky between

the walls the moon was rising. Work-trains with signal lanterns were

moving above and below the break, dumping ballast behind the track

layers. At a safe distance from the coming blast a dozen headlights

from the roundhouse were being prepared, and the car-tinks from Sleepy

Cat were rigging torches for the night.

The blasting powder in twenty-pound cans was being passed from hand to

hand to the chargers. Score after score of the compact cans of high

explosive had been packed into the scattered holes, and as if alive to

what was coming the chill air of the cañon took on the uneasiness of an

atmosphere laden with electricity. Men of the operating department

paced the bench impatiently, and trackmen working below in the flare of

scattered torches looked up oftener from their shovels to where a chain

of active figures moved on the face of the cliff. Word passed again

and again that the charging was done, but the orders came steadily from

the gloom on the ledge for more powder until the last pound the

engineer called for had been buried beneath his feet in the sleeping

rock.

After a long delay a red light swung slowly to and fro on the ledge.

From the extreme end of the cañon below the Cat's Paw came the crash of

a track-torpedo, answered almost instantly by a second, above the

break. It was the warning signal to get into the clear. There was a

buzz of rapid movement among the laborers. In twos and threes and

dozens, a ragged procession of lanterns and torches, they retreated,

foremen urging the laggards, until only a single man at each end of the

broken track kept within sight of the tiny red lantern on the ledge.

Again it swung in a circle and again the torpedoes replied, this time

all clear. The hush of a hundred voices, the silence of the bars and

shovels and picks gave back to the chill cañon its loneliness, and the

roar of the river rose undisturbed to the brooding night.




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