and still higher and farther back, at twenty feet, the largest of all
the crews was sinking the eighteen-foot holes to complete the fracture
of the great wall. Above the murmuring of the steel rang continually
the calls of the foremen, and hour after hour the shock of the drills
churned up and down the narrow canyon.

During each hour Glover was over every foot of the work, and inspecting
the track building. If a track boss couldn't understand what he wanted
the engineer could take a pick or a bar and give the man an object
lesson. He patrolled the canyon walls, the roadmasters behind him, with
so good an eye for loose bowlders, and fragments such as could be moved
readily with a gad, that his assistants before a second round had
spotted every handy chunk of rock within fifty feet of the water. He
put his spirit into the men and they gave their work the enthusiasm of
soldiers. But closest of all Glover watched the preparations for the
blast on the Cat's Paw.

Morris Blood in the meantime was sweeping the division for stone,
ballast, granite, gravel, anything that would serve to dump on Glover's
rock after the blast, and the two men were conferring on the track
about the supplies when a messenger appeared with word for Glover that
Mr. Brock's party were coming down the canyon.

When Glover intercepted the visitors they had already been guided to
the granite bench where his headquarters were fixed. With Mr. Brock
had come the young men, Miss Donner, and Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney
signalized her arrival by sitting down on a chest of dynamite--having
intimidated the modest headquarters custodian by asking for a chair so
imperiously that he was glad to walk away at her suggestion that he
hunt one up--though there was not a chair within several miles. It had
been no part of Glover's plan to receive his guests at that point, and
his first efforts after the greetings were to coax them away from the
interest they expressed in the equipment of an emergency headquarters,
and get them back to where the track crossed the river. But when the
young people learned that the blue-eyed boy at the little table on the
rock could send a telegram or a cablegram for them to any part of the
world, each insisted on putting a message through for the fun of the
thing, and even Mrs. Whitney could hardly be coaxed from the
illimitable possibilities just under her.

With a feeling of relief he got them away from the giant powder which
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