“Are you stopping at the Mansion House?” inquired the gambler.
“Yes,” answered the stranger, looking up.
“So am I,” nodded the gambler. “So I shall probably have the pleasure of meeting you again.”
“Why, yes; I trust so,” replied the stranger, after a quick, keen look at Duff. Undoubtedly this newcomer was accustomed to judging men quickly after seeing them.
“These boy engineers!” chucked Duff. “Humph!”
“Humph!” agreed the stranger.
At this moment two bronzed-looking, erect young men came tramping down the sidewalk together. Each looked the picture of health, of courage, of decision. Both wore the serviceable khaki now so common in surveying camps in warm climates. Below the knee the trousers were confined by leggings. Above the belt blue flannel shirts showed, yet these were of excellent fabric and looked trim indeed. To protect their heads and to shade their eyes as much as possible from the glare of Arizona desert sand, these young men wore sombreros of the type common in the Army.
“This looks like a good place, Harry,” said the taller of the two young men. “Suppose we go inside.”
They stepped into the barber shop together, nodding pleasantly to all inside. Then, hanging up their sombreros, they passed on to unoccupied chairs.
Just in the act of passing out, Jim Duff had stepped back to admit them.
“They're Reade and Hazelton, the very young engineers that the railroad has just put in charge of the Man-killer job,” whispered one knowing citizen of Paloma. The news quickly spread about the barber shop.
Jim Duff already knew the boys by sight, since they were stopping at the Mansion House. He uttered an almost inaudible “humph!” then passed on outside.
Neither Tom Reade nor Harry Hazelton heard this exclamation, nor would they have paid any heed to it if they had.
Yes; the two young men were our friends of old, the young engineers. Our readers are wholly familiar with Tom and Harry as far back as their grammar school days in the good old town of Gridley. Tom and Harry were members of that famous sextet of schoolboy athletes known at home as Dick & Co. The exploits of Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, as of Dick Prescott, Dave Darrin, Greg Holmes and Dan Dalzell, have been fully told, first in the “Grammar School Boys Series,” and then in the “High School Boys Series.”
After the close of the “High School Boys Series” the further adventures of Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes are told in the “West Point Series,” while all that befell Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell has already been found in the pages of the “Annapolis Series.”
In the preceding volume of this series, “The Young Engineers in Colorado,” our readers were made familiar with the real start in working life made by Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton. Back in the old High School days Reade and Hazelton had been fitting themselves to become civil engineers. They began their real work in the east, and had made good in sterner work in the mountains in Colorado.
Our readers all know how Tom and Harry opened their careers in Colorado by becoming “cub engineers” with one of the field camps of the S. B. & L. railroad. Taken only on trial, they had rapidly made good, and had earned the confidence of the chief engineer in charge of the work. When, owing to the sudden illness of both the chief engineer and his principal assistant the road's work had been crippled, Tom and Harry had had the courage as well as the opportunity to take hold, assume the direction, and complete the building of the S. B. & L. within the time required by the road's charter.
Had the young engineers failed, the S. B. & L., under the terms granted by the state, might have been seized and sold at public auction. In that case, the larger, and rival road, the W. C. & A., stood ready to buy out the S. B. & L. and reap the profits that the latter road had planned to earn. Not only had the young engineers succeeded in overcoming all natural obstacles, but, in a series of wonderful adventures, they had defeated the plots of agents of the W. C. & A. From that time on Tom and Harry had been famous in Colorado railroad circles.
After the S. B. & L. had been finished and put in operation, Tom Reade had remained with the railroad for several months, still serving as chief engineer, with Harry Hazelton as his trusted and dependable assistant.
Now, at last, they had been lured away from the S. B. & L. by the offer of a new chance to overcome difficulties of the sort that all fighting engineers love to encounter. The Arizona, Gulf & New Mexico Railroad—more commonly known as the A., G. & N. M.—while laying its tracks in an attempt at record-beating, had come afoul of the problem of the quicksand, as already outlined. Three different sets of engineers had attempted the feat of filling up the quicksand, only to abandon it.
There was little doubt that the Colthwaite Construction Company, a contracting firm with years of successful experience, could have, “stopped” the quicksand, but this Chicago firm wanted far more money for the job than the railroad people felt they could afford to spend.
So, in a moment of doubt, and harassed by troubles, one of the directors of the A., G. & N. M. had remembered the names and the performances of Tom and Harry. This director of the Arizona road, being a friend of President Newnham, of the S. B. & L. road, had written the latter, asking whether the services of Tom and Harry could be secured. The reply had been in the affirmative, and Tom and Harry had speedily traveled down into Arizona. In the few days they had been at this little town of Paloma, they had gone thoroughly over the ground, they had studied the problem, and had expressed their opinion that the job could be put through creditably at a cost not exceeding a quarter of a million dollars.
“Go to it, then!” General Manager Curtis had replied. “You have our road's credit at your command, and we look to you to make good. You are both very young, but Newnham's word is quite good enough for us.”
The day before this story opens this general manager had boarded one of the rough-looking construction trains and had gone back to the road's headquarters.
As they sat in the barber shop now Tom and Harry were quite unaware of the interested notice they were receiving. This was not surprising, for both were good, sane, wholesome American boys, with no more than the average share of conceit, and neither believed himself to be as much of a wonder as some experienced railroad men credited them with being.
“Stranger, excuse me, but you're Reade, aren't you?” inquired one of the men of Paloma who was present.
“Yes, sir,” nodded Tom, looking up pleasantly from the weekly paper that he had been scanning.
“You're head of the new job on the Man-killer, aren't you?” questioned the same man. By this time every man in the barber shop was secretly watching the young engineers, a fact that was plain to Harry Hazelton, as he glanced up from a magazine.
“Yee, sir,” Tom answered again. “In a way I'm at the head of it, but my friend, Hazelton, is really as much at the head as I am. We are partners, and we work together in everything.”
“Do you think, Reade, that you're going to win out on the job?” inquired another man.
“Yes, sir,” nodded Tom.
“You seem very confident about it,” smiled another.
“It's just a way we have,” Tom assented good-naturedly. “We always try to keep our nerve and our confidence with us.”
“Yet you are really sure?”
“Oh! yes,” Reade answered. “We have looked the quicksand over, and we feel sure that we see a way of stopping the Man-killer, and forcing it to sustain railroad ties and steel rails.”
“How are you going; to go about it?” questioned still another interested