ksand is a mile to the south of where the
tracks go, isn't it?" asked Farnsworth.

"Yes; and the first party of railway surveyors who went over the line
for their track thought they had dodged the Man-killer. Yet what they'll
find, in the end, is that the Man-killer is a bad affair, and that it
extends, under the earth, in many directions and for long distances. I
am certain that railway tracks will never be laid over any part of the
Man-killer."

"Perhaps not," assented Clarence meekly.

"What makes you think that the railroad can ever get across the
Man-killer?" persisted Duff.

"Why, for one thing, the very hopeful report of the new engineers who
have taken charge."

"Humph!" retorted Duff, as though that one word of contempt disposed of
the matter.

"Reade and Hazelton are very good engineers, are they not?" inquired
young Farnsworth.

"Humph! A pair of mere boys," sneered Jim Duff.

"Young fellows of about my age, you mean?" asked Farnsworth.

"Of your age?" repeated Duff, in a tone of wonder. "No! You're a man.
Reade and Hazelton, as I've told you, are mere boys. They're not of age.
They've never voted."

"Oh, I had no idea that they were as young as that," replied Clarence,
much pleased at hearing himself styled a man. "But these young engineers
come from one of the Colorado, railroads, don't they!"

"I wouldn't be surprised," nodded the gambler. "However, the Man-killer
is no task for boys. It is a job for giants to put through, if the job
ever can be finished."

"Then, if it's so difficult, why doesn't the road shift the track by two
or three miles?" inquired Clarence.

"You certainly are a newcomer here," laughed Duff easily. "Why, my son,
the railroad was chartered on condition that it run through certain
towns. Paloma, here, is one of the towns. So the road has to come here."

"But couldn't the road shift, just after it leaves here?" insisted
Clarence.

"Oh, certainly. Yet, if the road shifted enough to avoid any possibility
of resting on the big Man-killer, then it would have to go through the
range beyond here--would have to tunnel under the hills for a distance
of three miles. That would cost millions of dollars. No, sir; the
railroad will have to lay tracks across the Man-killer, or else it will
have to stand a loss so great as to cripple the road."

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted a keen, brisk, breezy-looking man, who had
entered the shop only a moment or two before. "There's a way t