re going to be swamped with freight traffic this
year, and I want it moved through the mountains like checkers for the
next six months. You know what I mean, George."

To McCloud the news came, in spite of himself, as a blow. The results
he had attained in building through the lower valley had given him
a name among the engineers of the whole line. The splendid showing of
the winter construction, on which he had depended to enable him to
finish the whole work within the year, was by this news brought to
naught. Those of the railroad men who said he could not deliver a
completed line within the year could never be answered now. And
there was some slight bitterness in the reflection that the very
stumbling-block to hold him back, to rob him of his chance for a
reputation with men like Glover and Bucks, should be the lands of
Dicksie Dunning.

He made no complaint. On the division he took hold with new energy
and bent his faculties on the operating problems. At Marion's he saw
Dicksie at intervals, and only to fall more hopelessly under her
spell each time. She could be serious and she could be volatile and
she could be something between which he could never quite make out.
She could be serious with him when he was serious, and totally
irresponsible the next minute with Marion. On the other hand, when
McCloud attempted to be flippant, Dicksie could be confusingly
grave. Once when he was bantering with her at Marion's she tried to
say something about her regret that complications over the right of
way should have arisen; but McCloud made light of it, and waved the
matter aside as if he were a cavalier. Dicksie did not like it, but it
was only that he was afraid she would realize he was a mere railroad
superintendent with hopes of a record for promotion quite blasted.
And as if this obstacle to a greater reputation were not enough, a
wilier enemy threatened in the spring to leave only shreds and
patches of what he had already earned.

The Crawling Stone River is said to embody, historically, all of the
deceits known to mountain streams. Below the Box Canyon it ploughs
through a great bed of yielding silt, its own deposit between the two
imposing lines of bluffs that resist its wanderings from side to side
of the wide valley. This fertile soil makes up the rich lands that are
the envy of less fortunate regions in the Great Basin; but the
Crawling Stone is not a river to give quiet title to one acre of its
own making. The