ck spot in a haze of dust,
speeding towards the New Mexican town of San Mateo, on the Burntwood
River two miles below camp, its cluster of brown adobe houses showing
indistinctly through the cottonwoods that embowered the place. For
Magney he felt a certain amount of sympathy, for the engineer was
leaving with a recognition of defeat; he was a likeable man, as Steele
Weir had discovered during their brief acquaintance, a good
theoretical engineer, but lacking in the prime quality of a successful
chief--fighting spirit and an indomitable will.

Under Magney the work of construction had been inaugurated the
previous summer, but progress had not been as rapid as desired; there
had been delays, labor difficulties, local opposition during the
months since; and Weir had been chosen to succeed Magney. In his
profession Weir had a reputation, built on relentless toil and sound
ideas and daring achievements--a reputation enhanced by a character of
mystery, for the man was unmarried, reserved, without intimates or
even friends, locking his lips about his life, and welcoming and
executing with grim indifference to risk engineering commissions of
extreme hazard, on which account he had acquired the soubriquet of
"Cold Steel" Weir.

Who first bestowed upon Weir that name is not known. But it was not
misapplied. Cold steel he had proved himself to be a score of times in
critical moments when other men would have broken: in pushing bridges
over mountain chasms, in mine disasters, in strikes, in almost
hopeless fights against bandits in Mexico. And it was this ability to
handle difficulties that had brought about the decision of the
directors of the company to put him in charge, as the man best
qualified, at San Mateo, where the situation was unsatisfactory,
costly, baffling.

Since his arrival a week before he had been consulting with Magney,
studying maps and blue-prints, examining the work and analyzing
general conditions. What had been accomplished had been well done; he
had no criticism to offer on that score. It was the delay; the work
was considerably behind schedule, which of course meant excessive
cost; and this had undermined the spirit of the enterprise. In a dozen
places, in a dozen ways, Magney, his predecessor, had been hampered,
checked, defeated--and the main contributing cause was poor workmen,
inefficient work. On that sore Weir's skillful finger fell at once.

Standing there before the low office building he wat