hat the
railroad can get over the Man-killer."

"What is that?" asked Duff, eyeing the newcomer's reflected image in the
mirror.

"The first thing to do," replied the stranger, "is to drop these boy
engineers out of the game. These youngsters came down here four days
ago, looked over the scene, and promised that they could get the tracks
laid-safely--for about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"Pooh!" jeered Duff, with a sidelong glance at young Farnsworth.

"Of course it is pooh!" laughed the stranger. "The thing can it be
done for any such amount as that, and it is a crazy idea, to take the
opinions of boys, anyway, on any such subject as that. Now, there's a
Chicago firm of contractors, the Colthwaite Construction Company, which
has proposed to take over the whole contract for laying tracks across
the Man-killer. These boys figure on using dirt and then more dirt,
and still more, until they've satisfied the appetite of the Man-killer,
filled up the quicksand and laid a bed of solid earth on which the
tracks will run safely for the next hundred years. The Colthwaite people
have looked over the whole proposition. They know that it can't be done.
The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be wasted, and then the
Colthwaite Company will have to come in, after all, drive its pillars of
steel and concrete, lay well-founded beds and get a basis that will hold
the new earth above it. Then the track will be safe, and the people of
this part of Arizona will have a railroad of which they can be proud.
But these boys--these kids in railroad building--humph!"

"Humph!" agreed Jim Duff dryly.

The gambler using the mirror before him, continued to study keenly this
stranger, even after the latter had ceased talking and had gone to one
of the chairs to wait his turn.

"You're through, sir," announced the barber who had been trying to
improve the gambler's appearance. "Thank you, sir. Next."

Clarence, wholly crushed by the weight of opinion, was not yet through
with his barber. Duff, after lighting a fresh cigar, stepped over to
where the newcomer was seated.

"Are you stopping at the Mansion House?" inquired the gambler.

"Yes," answered the stranger, looking up.

"So am I," nodded the gambler. "So I shall probably have the pleasure of
meeting you again."

"Why, yes; I trust so," replied the stranger, after a quick, keen look
at Duff. Undoubtedly this newcomer was accustomed to judging men quickly
after