night."

"I've got to dump a hundred cars of rock in there before we shall have
anything to lay track on; and I've got to pick the rock up all the way
from here to Goose River."

They walked together to the station.

When the night grew too dark for Callahan he had but one higher
thought--Bucks. Bucks was five hundred miles away at McCloud, but he
already had the particulars and was waiting at a key ready to take up
the trouble of his favorite division. Callahan at the wire in Sleepy
Cat told his story, and Bucks at the other end listened and asked
questions. He listened to every detail of the disaster, to the cold
hard figures of Agnew's estimates--which nothing could alter, jot or
tittle--and to Callahan's despairing question as to how he could
possibly save the unlooked-for avalanche of fruit.

For some time after the returns were in, Bucks was silent; silent so
long that the copper-haired man twisted in his chair, looked vacantly
around the office and chewed a cigar into strings. Then the sounder at
his hand clicked. He recognized Bucks sending in the three words
lightly spelled on his ear and jumped from his seat. Just three words
Bucks had sent and signed off. What galvanized Callahan was that the
words were so simple, so all-covering, and so easy. "Why didn't _I_
think of that?" groaned Callahan, mentally.

Then he reflected that he was nothing but a redheaded Irishman, anyway,
while Bucks was a genius. It never showed more clearly, Callahan
thought, than when he received the three words, "Send for Glover."

CHAPTER VII

TIME BEING MONEY

Sleepy Cat town was but just rubbing its eyes next morning when the
Brock train pulled in from Cascade. Clouds rolling loosely across the
mountains were pushing the night into the west, and in the east wind
promise of day followed, soft and cool.

On the platform in the gray light three men were climbing into the
gangway of a switch-engine, the last man so long and so loosely put
together that he was taking, as he always took when he tried to get
into small quarters, the chaffing of his companions on his size. He
smiled languidly at Callahan's excited greeting, and as they ran down
the yard listened without comment to the story of the washout. No
words were needed to convey to Glover or to Blood the embarrassment of
the situation. Freight trains crowded every track in the yard, and the
block of twelve hours indicated what a two-day tie-up would me