," grinned the agent from Chicago.

"I've seen enough of life," boasted the gambler quietly, "to be able
to judge most people at first sight. You shall soon see whether I don't
succeed in starting some hard feeling with Reade and Hazelton."

The nearer edge of the treacherous Man-killer was something more than
two miles west of the town of Paloma. In the course of a quarter of an
hour Tom and Harry drew rein near a portable wooden building that served
as an office in the field.

Mr. Hawkins, a solid-looking, bearded man of fifty, with snapping eyes
that contrasted with his drawling speech, stepped from the building.

"Hawkins," called Tom, as a Mexican boy led the horses away to the shade
of a stable tent, "I see you have some men idle."

"Nine-tenths of 'em are idle," replied the superintendent of
construction. "I warned you, Mr. Reade, that our gangs would soon eat up
the little work that you left us. Out there, by the last cave-in you'll
see that Foreman Payson, has about fifty men going. They'll be through
within an hour."

"And the material, even if delivered within the promised time, is still
two days away," remarked Reade. "I'll confess that I don't like to see
the railroad lose so much through paying men for idle time."

"It can't be helped, sir," replied the superintendent. "Of course, if
you like, you can set the laborers at work shoveling in more dirt at
the points where the last slide of the quicksand occurred. But, then,
shoveling dirt in, without the timbers and the hollow steel piles will
do no good," continued Hawkins, with a shake of his head. "It would be
worse than wasted work."

"I know all that," Tom admitted. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Hawkins,
I wouldn't mind the men's idleness quite so much if it weren't that the
pay train comes in this afternoon. An idle man, not over-nice about his
habits, and with a lot of money in his pockets, is a source of danger.
We're going to have five hundred such danger spots as soon as the men
are paid off."

"Don't know that, sir!" demanded Superintendent Hawkins. "The town of
Paloma is just dancing on sand-paper, it's so uneasy about getting its
hand into the pile of more than thirty-eight thousand dollars that the
pay train is going to bring in this afternoon."

"I know," nodded Tom rather gloomily. "I hate to see the men fleeced as
they're likely to be fleeced to-night. Some of our men will be so badly
done up that it will be a week before they get bac