re going to
need him a lot before this job's finished."

CHAPTER VII

CONRAD FLASHES A GUN

A whistle sounded down the line, a short nervous blast twice repeated.
An instant shrieking of handbrakes, and the rumbling train of loaded
flat-cars slowed down toward the trestle.

Torrance lumbered up from the supper table to watch. He was hoping
that by some slip of the levers up in Murphy's cab the rock-laden cars
would glide out over the trestle and give it a real test. The trains
that crossed carrying supplies to construction further west were
comparatively light, because of just such tender spots on the line; and
they never stopped until they reached the other side. And always they
sent back the taunting whistle of engineers breathing again after the
perils of the "softest" place on the line.

Murphy, the engineer of his ballast train, persistently refused to
expose one little car to "the crazy conthraption ye have the nerve to
call a threstle. Sure I'd as lave tie down me gauge and sit on the
biler as put a foot on that skinny doodle." And Murphy never made a
mistake with his levers.

As Torrance watched, the end car slowly glided back toward the trestle
and, to the sharply extended arms of an overalled brakesman, came to a
standstill with a few inches of the truck overhanging the gossamer
structure.

Far up the track the engine puffed and panted. Presently a bewhiskered
little old Irishman climbed from it and came ploughing down beside the
grade.

"Late to-night, Murphy," said Torrance severely. "What's the row?"

"Row, d'ye ask? Listen to that now," he demanded of the grinning
brakesman. "Huh!" He bent to examine his sand-filled boots. "I'll be
later still some o' these nights, that I will, ye big bully, if ye
don't take the throuble to lay a footpath down that gr-rade for dacent
citizens to use. Me legs are only that long, and I wasn't born on the
seashore. Some day I'll stay up with me cab, I will, and then who'll
brighten up yeer dull and unintheresting lives? How'd ye kape in touch
with civilisation then, I'd ask ye?"

As the extent of Murphy's connection with civilisation was never more
than fifteen miles down the line, Torrance and Tressa could laugh
without offending his choleric feelings.

Murphy became aware of the few inches of flatcar that overhung the
trestle.

"Ye mooney-face!" he roared at the brakesman who, his day's work done,
was lolling on the grass. "Don't ye kno