stood
out the seamed and cracked cliffs, and below yawned the abyss. The
nearer side of the gorge could only be guessed at.

Neale crawled to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat, he
tried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see much, for
upon getting up he shook his head. Then he gazed at the bulging wall.

"The side of that can be blown off," he muttered.

"But what's around the corner? If it's straight stone wall for miles and
miles we are done," said Boone, another of the engineers.

"The opposite wall is just that," added Henney. "A straight stone wall."

General Lodge gazed at the baffling gorge. His face became grimmer,
harder. "It seems impossible to go on, but we must go on!" he said.

A short silence ensued. The engineers faced one another like men
confronted by a last and crowning hindrance. Then Neale laughed. He
appeared cool and confident.

"It only looks bad," he said. "We'll climb to the top and I'll go down
over the wall on a rope."

Neale had been let down over many precipices in those stony hills. He
had been the luckiest, the most daring and successful of all the men
picked out and put to perilous tasks. No one spoke of the accidents that
had happened, or even the fatal fall of a lineman who a few weeks
before had ventured once too often. Every rod of road surveyed made the
engineers sterner at their task, just as it made them keener to attain
final success.

The climb to the top of the bluff was long and arduous. The whole corps
went, and also some of the troopers.

"I'll need a long rope," Neale had said to King, his lineman.

It was this order that made King take so much time in ascending the
bluff. Besides, he was a cowboy, used to riding, and could not climb
well.

"Wal--I--shore--rustled--all the line--aboot heah," he drawled,
pantingly, as he threw lassoes and coils of rope at Neale's feet.

Neale picked up some of the worn pieces. He looked dubious. "Is this all
you could get?" he asked.

"Shore is. An' thet includes what Casey rustled from the soldiers."

"Help me knot these," went on Neale.

"Wal, I reckon this heah time I'll go down before you," drawled King.

Neale laughed and looked curiously at his lineman. Back somewhere in
Nebraska this cowboy from Texas had attached himself to Neale. They
worked together; they had become friends. Larry Red King made no bones
of the fact that Texas had grown too hot for him. He had been born
with an it