to you strong and grateful. What's his name?"

"I don't know," returned Reade. "I don't even know to whose gang he
belongs, though I think he's one of Payson's men."

Late the following afternoon the laborer was brought back to camp. The
following morning he returned to his work as usual.

During the next two weeks Tom and Harry directed all their energies, as
well as the labor of all of their men, to bridging over that bad spot in
the Man-killer that had so nearly claimed two lives. One after another
six different layers of log network were put down. The open box cars
brought up thousands of tons of good soil, which was dumped down into
the layers of interlaced logs.

"The old Man-killer must feel tremendously flattered at finding himself
so persistently manicured," laughed Tom as he sat in saddle watching the
men putting down the sixth layer.

Steel piles, hollow and filled with cement, were being driven here, the
cement not going in until the top of the pile was but four feet above
the level of the desert.

"Look out yonder," nodded Harry, handing his field glass to his chum.
"You can just make out a glint on the sand. That's one of our steel
piles being sucked under."

"The explorer of a few centuries hence may find a lot of these piles,"
laughed Tom. "If he does, he'll most likely attribute them to the Pueblo
Indians or the Aztecs, and he'll write a learned volume about the high
state of civilization that existed among the savages here before the
white man came."

"I'm mighty glad, Tom, that General Manager Ellsworth isn't out here
to see how many dozens of steel piles we're feeding hopelessly to the
Man-killer."

"Not one of those piles is going down hopelessly," Tom retorted. "Some
of the piles may disappear, and never be seen again, but each one
will help hold the drift at some point, near the surface, or perhaps a
thousand feet below the surface."

"Only a thousand feet below the surface!" Harry grunted. "Tom, I often
feel certain that the Man-killer extends away down to the center of the
earth and up again on the other side. Before I'm a very old man I expect
to hear that several of our steel piles have shot up above the surface
in China or India."

Hearing the noise of horse's hoofs behind him, Tom turned. He beheld
Fred Ransom riding out to the spot on a mottled "calico" horse.

"Look who's here," Reade murmured to his chum.

"What are you going to do with him?" asked Hazelton, after a quick