hrough many experiences to call.

"I'm not doing the talking now," said Callahan at length with a
sidewise glance, "but if you get a hundred cars of rock into that hole
by twelve o'clock to-night--not to speak of laying steel--you can have
my job, old man."

"Then look up another right away, for I'll have the rock in the river
long before that. Now don't rubber, but get after the men and the
drills----"

"The drills?"

"I said the whole outfit."

"Would it be proper to ask what you are going to drill?"

"Perfectly proper." Glover pointed again to the shelving wall across
the river. "It will save time and freight to tumble the Cat's Paw into
the river--there's ten times the rock we need right there--I can dump a
thousand yards where we need it in thirty seconds after I get my powder
in. That will give us our foundation and your roadmasters can lay a
track over it in six hours that will carry your fruit--I wouldn't
recommend it for dining-cars, but it will do for plums and cherries.
And by the way, Morris," called Glover--Blood already twenty feet away
was scrambling down the path--"if Ed Smith's got any giant powder
borrow sticks enough to spring thirty or forty holes with, will you?
I've got plenty of black up at Pilot. You can order it down by the
time we are ready to blast."

In another hour the canyon looked as if a hive of bees were swarming on
the Cat's Paw. With shovels, picks, bars, hammers, and drills, hearty
in miners' boots and pied in woollen shirts the first of Ed Smith's men
were clambering into place. The field telegraph had been set up on the
bench above the point: every few moments a new batch of irrigation men
appeared stringing up the ledge, and with the roadmasters as
lieutenants, Glover, on the apex of the low spur of the mountain,
taking reports and giving orders, surveyed his improvised army.

At the upper and lower ends of the track where the roadbed had not
completely disappeared the full force of section men, backed by the
irrigation laborers, were busy patching the holes.

At the point where the break was complete and the Rat River was
viciously licking the vertical face of the rock a crew of men, six feet
above the track level, were drilling into the first ledge a set of
six-foot holes. On the next receding ledge, twelve feet above the old
track level, a second crew were tamping a set of holes to be sunk
twelve feet. Above them the drills were cutting into the third ledge,