dvancing
"front," they stopped to try for track-clearings.

As Leckhard had foretold, the operator could give them little help. Two
hours earlier, a train of empties in two sections had left the
end-of-track, coming eastward. Whether it was hung up at one of the
intervening side-tracks, or was still coming, the operator could not
say; and there were no means of finding out. Also, Mr. Frisbie, who had
reached Riley's camp late in the afternoon, had left there after supper
and was somewhere on the line with his light engine--probably on his
way to the front, the operator thought.

Hector removed his great weight from the telegraph counter and the
woodwork creaked its relief. What he said was indicative of his frame of
mind.

"Humph!" he growled. "If we don't get tangled up with Mr. Frisbie's
light engine, it's us for a head-ender with the string of empties. Isn't
that about it, Mr. Ford?"

"That's it, precisely."

"Which means that Jimmy Shovel trots ahead of us for a hundred mile 'r
so, carryin' a lantern like a blame' Dio-geenes huntin' for an honest
man."

"That is the size of it," said Ford; but just then the sounder on the
table began to click and the operator held up his hand for silence.

"Hold on a minute," he interrupted, "here's a piece of luck--it's Mr.
Frisbie, cutting in with his field set from Camp Frierson. He is asking
Saint's Rest about you."

"Break in and tell him we're here," said Ford; and when it was done:
"Ask him about that string of empties."

The reply was apparently another piece of luck. Frisbie, going westward,
had passed the first section of the freight train at Siding Number
Twelve. It was hung up with a broken draw-head on the engine, and was
safe to stay there, Frisbie thought, until somebody came along with a
repair kit, which, it might be assumed, would not be before morning.

At this point Ford went around the counter and took the wire for a
little personal talk with the first assistant. It ignored the stalled
freight train, and Ford's rapid clickings spelled out an order. Frisbie
was to drop everything else, and constitute himself the president's
_avant-courrier_ to the end-of-track camp, which, at the moment,
happened to be the MacMorroghs' headquarters at the mouth of Horse
Creek. All liquor-selling was to be stopped, the saloons closed, and the
strictest order maintained during the president's stay--this if it
should take the entire field force of the engineering depart