dually made
themselves crack athletes. Baseball and football were their especial
sports, and in these they had reached a degree of skill that had
made many a college trainer anxious to obtain them.

None of the six, however, had gone to college. Dick Prescott
and Greg Holmes had secured appointments as cadets at the United
States Military Academy, at West Point. Their adventures are
told in the "_West Point Series_." Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell,
feeling the call to the Navy, had entered the United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis. Their further doings are all described
in the "_Annapolis Series_."

Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, however, had found that their aspirations
pointed to the great constructive work that is done by the big-minded,
resourceful American civil engineer of today. Bridge building,
railroad building, the tunneling of mines---in a word, the building
of any of the great works of industry possessed a huge fascination
for them.

Tom was good-natured and practical, Harry at times full of mischief
and at others dreamy, but both longed with all their souls to
place themselves some day in the front ranks among civil engineers.

At high school they had given especial study to mathematics.
At home they had studied engineering, through correspondence courses
and otherwise. During more than the last year of their home life
our two boys had worked much in the offices of a local civil engineer,
and had spent part of their school vacations afield with him.

Finally, after graduating from school both boys had gone to New
York in order to look the world over. By dint of sheer push,
three-quarters of which Tom had supplied, the boys had secured
their first chance in the New York offices of the S.B. & L. Not
much of a chance, to be sure, but it meant forty dollars a month
and board in the field, with the added promise that, if they turned
out to be "no good," they would be promptly "bounced."

"If 'bounced' we are," Tom remarked dryly, "we'll have to walk
home, for our money will just barely take us to Colorado."

So here they were, having come by rail to a town some distance
west of Pueblo. From the last railway station they had been obliged
to make thirty miles or more by wagon to the mountain field camp
of the S.B. & L.

Since daybreak they had been on the way, eating breakfast and
lunch from the paper parcels that they had brought with them.

"How much farther is the camp, now that you know th