“Buzz-zz!” The fly in front of the gambler took wing and vanished toward the rear of the store.
Some of the Arizona men looking on smiled knowingly. They had realized from the start that young Farnsworth had stood no show of winning the stupid wager.
“You win,” stated young Clarence, in a tone that betrayed no annoyance.
Drawing a roll of bills from his pocket, he fumbled until he found a twenty. This he passed to Duff, sitting in the next chair.
“You're not playing in luck to-day,” smiled Duff gently, as he tucked away the money in one of his coat pockets. “You're a good sportsman, Farnsworth, at any rate.”
“I flatter myself that I am,” replied Clarence, blushing slightly.
Jim Duff continued calmly puffing at the cigar that rested between his teeth. They were handsome teeth, though, in some way, they made one think of the teeth of a vicious dog.
“Coming over to the hotel this afternoon?” continued Duff.
“I—I—” hesitated Clarence.
“Coming, did you say?” persisted Duff gently.
“I shall have to see my mail first. There may be letters—”
“Oh,” nodded Duff, with just a trace of irony as the younger man again hesitated.
“Life is not all playtime for me, you know,” Farnsworth continued, looking rather shame-faced. “I—er—have some business affairs attention at times.”
“Oh, don't try to join me at the hotel this if you have more interesting matters in prospect,” smiled the gambler.
Again Clarence flushed. He looked up to Jim Duff as a thorough “man of the world,” and wanted to stand well in the gambler's good opinion. Clarence Farnsworth was, as yet, too green to know that, too often, the man who has seen much of the world has seen only its seamy and worthless side. Possibly Farnsworth was destined to learn this later on—after the gambler had coolly fleeced him.
“Before long,” Farnsworth went on, changing the subject, “I must get out on the desert and take a look at the quicksand that the railroad folks are trying to cross.”
“The railroad people will probably never cross that quicksand,” remarked Jim Duff, the lids closing over his eyes for a moment.
“Oh, I don't know about that,” continued Farnsworth argumentatively.
“I think I do,” declared Jim Duff easily. “My belief, Farnsworth, is that the railroad people might dig up the whole of New Mexico, transport the dirt here and dump it on top of that quicksand, and still the quicksand would settle lower and lower and the tracks would still break up and disappear. There's no bottom to that quicksand.”
“Of course you ought to know all about it, Duff,” Clarence made haste to answer. “You've lived here for years, and you know all about this section of the country.”
That didn't quite suit the gambler. What he sought to do was to raise an argument with the young man—who still had some money left.
“What makes you think, Farnsworth, that the railroad can win out with the desert and lay tracks across the quicksand? That's a bad quicksand, you know. It has been called the 'Man-killer.' Many a prospector or cow-puncher has lost his life in trying to get over that sand.”
“The real Man-killer quicksand is a mile to the south of where the tracks go, isn't it?” asked Farnsworth.
“Yes; and the first party of railway surveyors who went over the line for their track thought they had dodged the Man-killer. Yet what they'll find, in the end, is that the Man-killer is a bad affair, and that it extends, under the earth, in many directions and for long distances. I am certain that railway tracks will never be laid over any part of the Man-killer.”
“Perhaps not,” assented Clarence meekly.
“What makes you think that the railroad can ever get across the Man-killer?” persisted Duff.
“Why, for one thing, the very hopeful report of the new engineers who have taken charge.”
“Humph!” retorted Duff, as though that one word of contempt disposed of the matter.
“Reade and Hazelton are very good engineers, are they not?” inquired young Farnsworth.
“Humph! A pair of mere boys,” sneered Jim Duff.
“Young fellows of about my age, you mean?” asked Farnsworth.
“Of your age?” repeated Duff, in a tone of wonder. “No! You're a man. Reade and Hazelton, as I've told you, are mere boys. They're not of age. They've never voted.”
“Oh, I had no idea that they were as young as that,” replied Clarence, much pleased at hearing himself styled a man. “But these young engineers come from one of the Colorado, railroads, don't they!”
“I wouldn't be surprised,” nodded the gambler. “However, the Man-killer is no task for boys. It is a job for giants to put through, if the job ever can be finished.”
“Then, if it's so difficult, why doesn't the road shift the track by two or three miles?” inquired Clarence.
“You certainly are a newcomer here,” laughed Duff easily. “Why, my son, the railroad was chartered on condition that it run through certain towns. Paloma, here, is one of the towns. So the road has to come here.”
“But couldn't the road shift, just after it leaves here?” insisted Clarence.
“Oh, certainly. Yet, if the road shifted enough to avoid any possibility of resting on the big Man-killer, then it would have to go through the range beyond here—would have to tunnel under the hills for a distance of three miles. That would cost millions of dollars. No, sir; the railroad will have to lay tracks across the Man-killer, or else it will have to stand a loss so great as to cripple the road.”
“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted a keen, brisk, breezy-looking man, who had entered the shop only a moment or two before. “There's a way that the railroad can get over the Man-killer.”
“What is that?” asked Duff, eyeing the newcomer's reflected image in the mirror.
“The first thing to do,” replied the stranger, “is to drop these boy engineers out of the game. These youngsters came down here four days ago, looked over the scene, and promised that they could get the tracks laid-safely—for about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Pooh!” jeered Duff, with a sidelong glance at young Farnsworth.
“Of course it is pooh!” laughed the stranger. “The thing can it be done for any such amount as that, and it is a crazy idea, to take the opinions of boys, anyway, on any such subject as that. Now, there's a Chicago firm of contractors, the Colthwaite Construction Company, which has proposed to take over the whole contract for laying tracks across the Man-killer. These boys figure on using dirt and then more dirt, and still more, until they've satisfied the appetite of the Man-killer, filled up the quicksand and laid a bed of solid earth on which the tracks will run safely for the next hundred years. The Colthwaite people have looked over the whole proposition. They know that it can't be done. The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be wasted, and then the Colthwaite Company will have to come in, after all, drive its pillars of steel and concrete, lay well-founded beds and get a basis that will hold the new earth above it. Then the track will be safe, and the people of this part of Arizona will have a railroad of which they can be proud. But these boys—these kids in railroad building—humph!”
“Humph!” agreed Jim Duff dryly.
The gambler using the mirror before him, continued to study keenly this stranger, even after the latter had ceased talking and had gone to one of the chairs to wait his turn.
“You're