“I suppose I’m thick,” Harry murmured.  “How would Black, by turning in some wrong backsights and foresights, expect to delay the building of the road, even if he wanted to do it?”

“How?” repeated Tom Reade, showing an amount of heat and excitement that he rarely displayed.  “Why, Harry, this same old Section Nineteen is one of the hard spots on the road.  A lot of excavating has to be done before the tracks can be laid here.  It’s not a mere matter of scooping up dirt and removing it, either.  A large amount of solid rock has to be blasted out here before the roadbed can be laid.”

“I know it,” Harry nodded.

“Well, then, at the present moment our chief, Mr. Thurston, is preparing the estimates for the work that must be done.  On his estimates will be based the strength of the laboring gangs that must come forward to do the work.”

“Yes.”

“Then, suppose that Mr. Thurston has been misled into making a certain estimate as to the number of thousand cubic yards of stuff that must be taken out of the outs that are to be made.  After he gets his laborers here, and at work, he finds that he has at least three times as much rock and dirt to get out-----”

“I see,” cried Hazelton.  “Before the chief could get men and wagons, and make all necessary changes in the work, the time would have slipped by so far that the finishing of the road would be blocked.”

“And the S.B. & L. would lose its charter,” finished Tom grimly.

“It’s mighty lucky that we came out here today, then,” exclaimed Hazelton, now fully alive to the danger that menaced their employers.  “Come, we must hustle back to camp and show Mr. Thurston how he has been imposed on.  There can’t be a doubt that ’Gene Black has been deliberately crooked.”

“Go slowly,” advised Tom.  “Don’t be in a rush to call any other man a crook.  Mr. Thurston can hear our report.  Then he can look into it himself and form his own opinion.  That’s as far as we have any right to go in the matter.”

“Thurston is at fault in not having come out here himself,” Harry continued.  “The chief engineer in charge of a job should know every foot of the way.”

“Thurston, from the nature of his own work, is obliged to leave much of the detail to his assistant, Mr. Blaisdell,” Tom explained.

“Then why doesn’t Blaisdell look out that no such treacherous work is done by any member of the engineer corps?” flared Harry.

“’Gene Black is plainly a very competent man,” Reade argued.  “The work has had to be rushed of late, and, on so simple a matter as leveling, I don’t suppose Blaisdell has thought it at all necessary to dig into Black’s field notes.”

“I hope Black is fired out of this outfit, neck and crop!” finished Hazelton.

“That’s something with which we have nothing to do,” Reade retorted.  “Harry, we’ll confine ourselves to doing our work well and reporting our results.  Mr. Thurston is intelligent enough to form all his own conclusions when he has our report.  Come, it’s high time for us to be putting the ponies to real speed on the trail back.”

Not long afterwards the young engineers rode into the engineer camp.  Harry dismounted, seating himself on the ground, while Tom hurried toward the chief’s big tent.

It was Blaisdell who sat in the chief’s chair when Tom entered.

“Oh, hello, Reade,” was the assistant’s pleasant greeting.

“Where’s the chief?”

“Gone back to the track builders.  You know, they’re within fourteen miles of us now.”

“When will Mr. Thurston be back?”

“I don’t know,” Blaisdell answered.  “In the meantime, Reade, you know, I’m acting chief here.”

“I beg your pardon,” Tom murmured hastily.

“The chief told me, just before leaving, that you thought some of Black’s sights on Section Nineteen are wrong,” Blaisdell pursued.

“They’re all wrong,” Reade rejoined quietly.

“All?” echoed Blaisdell, opening his eyes very wide.

“Yes, sir; everyone of them.”

“Come, come, Reade!” remonstrated the acting chief.  “Don’t try to amuse yourself with me.  All of the sights can’t be wrong.”

“But they are, sir.  Hazelton and I have been over them most carefully in the field.  Here are our notes, sir.  Look them over and you’ll find that Section Nineteen calls for three or four times as much excavating as Black’s notes show.”

“This is strange!” mused Blaisdell, after comparing the two sets of notes.  “I can’t credit it.  Reade, you and Hazelton are very young –­mere cubs, in fact.  Are you sure that you know all you owlet to know about leveling?”

“Mr. Blaisdell, I’ll answer you by saying, sir, that though Hazelton and I are nothing but cubs, we have the success of this railroad building game at heart.  We’re deeply in earnest.  We’ll work ourselves to our very bones in order to see this road get through in time.  I don’t ask you, sir, to take our word about these sights, but we both beg you, sir, to go out with a gang of men and go over some of the work yourself.  Keep on surveying, sir, until you’re satisfied that Black is wrong and that Hazelton and I are right.  You know what it would mean, sir, if we’re right and you don’t find it out in time.  Then you simply couldn’t get the cut through Section Nineteen in time and the S.B. & L. would lose its charter.”

“By Jove, you’re right,” muttered Blaisdell uneasily, as he slowly stood up.  “Reade, I’m going to take men and go out, carrying your notes and Black’s.  Let me warn you, however, that if I find that Black is right and you’re wrong, then it will give you two cubs such a black eye that the chief will run you out of camp.”

“If we had made any such gigantic blunder as that,” returned Tom firmly, “then we’d deserve to be run out.  We wouldn’t have the nerve to put in another night in camp.”

“Hey, you, don’t unsaddle those ponies.  Hold yourselves ready to go out,” called Blaisdell from the doorway of the tent.

“Will you give us our orders on drawing before you go, sir?” asked Reade.

“No,” smiled Blaisdell.  “If you’ve made a blunder out on Nineteen, then you’re not to be trusted with drawing.  Wait until I return.  Take it easy until then.”

“Very good.”

“And –­Reade!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Neither you nor Hazelton are to let a word cross your lips regarding the disagreement over Section Nineteen.”

“You’ll never have any trouble, sir, over our talking when we ought not to do it,” promised Reade.

Two minutes later the assistant engineer rode out with a pair of rodmen whom he picked up on the way to Nineteen.

“What happened?” asked Harry, coming into the big tent.

Tom told him all that had taken place, adding the caution that nothing was to be said about the matter for the present.

“Whew!  I wish Mr. Blaisdell had let me go along,” murmured Hazelton.  “I’d like to have seen his face when he finds out!”

Hearing footsteps approaching outside, Reade signaled for silence.  Then the flap of the tent was pulled back and Bad Pete glanced in.

“Howdy, pardners?” was the greeting from the bad man, that caused Tom Reade almost to fall from his campstool.

“How are you, Peter?” returned Tom.  “This is, indeed, a pleasure.”

“Where’s the boss?” continued Bad Pete.

“If you mean Mr. Thurston, he’s away.”

“Where’s Blaisdell, then?”

“He hit the trail, just a few minutes ago,” Tom responded.

“Then I suppose you have no objections if I sit in here a while?”

“Peter,” replied Tom solemnly, “you’ll be conferring a great honor on us.”

The bad man’s present mood was so amiable that Harry did not deem it desertion to go outside.  Bad Pete had his cartridge belt restocked with sure-enough cartridges, and his revolver swung as jauntily in its holster as ever.  Pete seemed to have no idea, however, of trying to terrify anyone with his hardware.

“You’ve been away?” suggested Tom, by way of making conversation, after an awkward silence had endured for nearly two minutes.

“Yep,” admitted the bad one.  “Pardner, it seems like home to get back.  Do you know, Reade, I’ve taken a big liking to you?”

“Peter,” protested Tom, “if you don’t look out you’ll make me the vainest cub on earth.”

“I mean it,” asserted Pete.  “Pardner, I’ve a notion me and you are likely to become big friends.”

“I never dared to hope for so much,” breathed Tom, keeping back a laugh.

“’Cause,” continued Bad Pete, “I reckon you’re one of the kind that never goes back on a real pardner.”

“I should hope not,” Tom assured him.

“Have a cigar?” urged Pete, doffing his sombrero and taking out a big, black weed that he tendered the cub.

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Tom curiously.

For just a second Bad Pete’s eyes flashed.  Then he choked back all signs of anger as he drawled: 

“The only matter with this cigar, pardner, is that it’s a gen-u-wine Havana cigar.”

“I couldn’t tell it from a genuine Baltimore,” asserted Tom.  “But I suppose that is because I never smoked.”

“You never smoked?  Pardner, you’ve got a lot to learn,” replied Bad Pete, as he put the cigar back in his hat and replaced the latter on his head.  “And, while we’re talking about such matters, pardner, you might just hand me a twenty for a few days.”

“Twenty dollars?” returned Tom.  “Peter, until payday gets around I won’t have twenty cents.”

Bad Pete gazed at the cub keenly.

“Fact!” Tom assured him.

“Huh!” grunted Pete, rising.  “I’ve been wasting my time on a pauper!”

Saying which, he stalked out.

Tom discreetly repressed his desire to laugh.  Hazelton glided into the tent, grinning.

“Tom, be careful not to string Bad Pete so hard, or, one of these days, you’ll get him so mad that he won’t be able to resist drilling you through with lead.”

“Let’s go over to the cook tent and either beg or steal something to eat,” proposed Reade.

It was two hours later when a rodman rode hurriedly into camp.

“Hey, you cubs,” he called, “come and help me get Mr. Blaisdell’s bed ready for him.  He’s coming back sick.”

“Sick?” demanded Reade, thunderstruck.  “Why, he looked healthy enough when he went out of camp a little while ago.”

“He’s sick enough, now,” retorted the rodman.

“What ails Mr. Blaisdell?” asked Harry.

“It’s mountain fever, I reckon,” rejoined the rodman.  “Blaisdell must have been off color for days, and didn’t really know it.”

All three worked rapidly getting everything in readiness for the coming of the assistant engineer.  Then Mr. Blaisdell was brought in, on a stretcher rigged between two ponies.  The acting chief is face was violently flushed, his eyes seemed bright as diamonds.

“Reade,” said the acting chief thickly, as they lifted him from the litter to his cot, “if I’m not better by morning you’ll have to get word to the chief.”

“Yes, sir,” assented Reade, placing a hand on Blaisdell’s forehead.  It felt hot and feverish.  “May I ask, sir, if you verified any of the sights on Nineteen?”

“I –­I took some of ’em,” replied the acting chief hesitatingly.  “Reade, I’m not sure that I remember aright, but I think –­I think –­you and Hazelton were correct about that.  I –­wish I could –­remember.”

Bill Blaisdell closed his eyes, and his voice trailed off into murmurs that none around him could understand.  Even Reade, with his very slight experience in such matters, realized that the acting chief was a very sick man.

“You cubs better clear out of here now,” suggested one of the rodmen.  “I know better how to take care of men with mountain fever.”

“I hope you do know more about nursing than I do, Carter,” replied Tom very quietly.  “In the future, however, don’t forget that, though I may be a cub, I am an engineer, and you are a rodman.  When you speak to me address me as Mr. Reade.  Come, men, all out of here but the nurse.”

Once in the open Tom turned to Harry with eyes ablaze.

“Harry, could anything be tougher?  The chief away, the acting chief down with fever and on the verge of delirium –­and a crooked engineer in our crowd who’s doing his best to sell out the S.B. & L. –­bag, baggage and charter!”