true prophet; it isn't in me to think girl
and to play the great game at one and the same moment," he said,
flinging a word to the assistant professor of geology across the
distance abysses; and the fat porter said: "Sah?"

"I was just asking what time I shall reach Denver, going in by way of
the main line and Cheyenne," said Ballard, with cheerful mendacity.

"Erbout six o'clock in the evenin', sah; yes, sah. Huccome you to get
lef', Cap'n Boss?"

"I didn't get left; it was the Denver sleeper that got left," laughed
the Kentuckian. After which he refilled his pipe, wrote a telegram to
Mr. Pelham, and one to the Pullman conductor about his hand-baggage, and
resigned himself to the inevitable, hoping that the chapter of accidents
had done its utmost.

Unhappily, it had not, as the day forthcoming amply proved. Reaching
Cheyenne at late breakfast-time, Ballard found that the Denver train
over the connecting line waited for the "Overland" from the West; also,
that on this day of all days, the "Overland" was an hour behind her
schedule. Hence there was haste-making extraordinary at the end of the
Boston-Denver flight. When the delayed Cheyenne train clattered in over
the switches, it was an hour past dark. President Pelham was waiting
with his automobile to whisk the new chief off to a hurried dinner-table
conference at the Brown Palace; and what few explanations and
instructions Ballard got were sandwiched between the _consomme au
gratin_ and the dessert.

Two items of information were grateful. The Fitzpatrick Brothers,
favourably known to Ballard, were the contractors on the work; and
Loudon Bromley, who had been his friend and loyal understudy in the
technical school, was still the assistant engineer, doing his best to
push the construction in the absence of a superior.

Since the chief of any army stands or falls pretty largely by the grace
of his subordinates, Ballard was particularly thankful for Bromley. He
was little and he was young; he dressed like an exquisite, wore neat
little patches of side-whiskers, shot straight, played the violin, and
stuffed birds for relaxation. But in spite of these hindrances, or,
perhaps, because of some of them, he could handle men like a born
captain, and he was a friend whose faithfulness had been proved more
than once.

"I shall be only too glad to retain Bromley," said Ballard, when the
president told him he might choose his own assistant. And, as time
pressed, he asked