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Read Ebook: The Young Engineers in Colorado; Or At Railroad Building in Earnest by Hancock H Irving Harrie Irving
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Ebook has 1768 lines and 50739 words, and 36 pages
From one pocket Bad Pete produced a cigarette paper and from another tobacco. Slowly he rolled and lighted a cigarette, in the meantime seeming hardly aware of the existence of the tenderfeet. At last, however, he turned to the Colorado boy and observed:
"Pardner, I reckon you'd better drive on with these tenderfeet before I drop them over the cliff. They spoil the view. Ye know where Bandy's Gulch is?"
"Sure," nodded the Colorado boy.
"Ye'll find the railroad outfit jest about a mile west o' there, camped close to the main trail."
"I'm sure obliged to you," nodded the Colorado boy, stepping up to his seat and gathering in the reins.
"And so are we, sir," added Tom politely.
"Hold your blizzard in until I ask ye to talk," retorted Bad Pete haughtily. "Drive on with your cheap baggage, pardner."
"Cheap baggage, are we?" mused Tom, when the wagon had left Bad Pete some two hundred feet to the rear. "My, but I feel properly humiliated!"
"How many men has Bad Pete killed?" inquired Harry in an awed voice.
"Don't know as he ever killed any," replied the Colorado boy, "but I'm not looking for trouble with any man that always carries a revolver at his belt and goes around looking for someone to give him an excuse to shoot. The pistol might go off, even by accident."
"Are there many like Mr. Peter Bad in these hills nowadays?" Tom inquired.
"You'll find the foothills back near Denver or Pueblo," replied the Colorado youth coldly "You're up in the mountains now."
"Well, are there many like Peter Bad in these mountains?" Tom amended.
"Not many," admitted their driver. "The old breed is passing. You see, in these days, we have the railroad, public schools, newspapers, the telegraph, electric light, courts and the other things that go with civilization."
"The old days of romance are going by," sighed Harry Hazelton.
"Do you call murder romantic?" Reade demanded. "Harry, you came west expecting to find the Colorado of the dime novels. Now we've traveled hundreds of miles across this state, and Mr. Bad wore the first revolver that we've seen since we crossed the state line. My private opinion is that Peter would be afraid to handle his pistol recklessly for fear it would go off."
"I wouldn't bank on that," advised the young driver, shaking his head.
"But you don't carry a revolver," retorted Tom Reade.
"Pop would wallop me, if I did," grinned the Colorado boy. "But then, I don't need firearms. I know enough to carry a civil tongue, and to be quiet when I ought to."
"I suppose people who don't possess those virtues are the only people that have excuse for carrying a pistol around with their keys, loose change and toothbrushes," affirmed Reade. "Harry, the longer you stay west the more people you'll find who'll tell you that toting a pistol is a silly, trouble-breeding habit."
They drove along for another hour before a clattering sounded behind them.
"I believe it's Bad Pete coming," declared Harry, as he made out, a quarter of a mile behind them, the form of a man mounted on a small, wiry mustang.
"Yep; it is," nodded the Colorado boy, after a look back.
The trail being wider here Bad Pete whirled by them with a swift drumming of his pony's hoofs. In a few moments more he was out of sight.
"Humph! Anyone can ride that knows enough to get into a saddle and stick there," observed the Colorado boy dryly.
Back in old Gridley there had once been a schoolboy crowd of six, known as Dick & Co. Under the leadership of Dick Prescott, these boys had made their start in athletics in the Central Grammar School, winning no small amount of fame as junior schoolboy athletes.
Then in their High School days Dick & Co. had gradually made themselves crack athletes. Baseball and football were their especial sports, and in these they had reached a degree of skill that had made many a college trainer anxious to obtain them.
Tom was good-natured and practical, Harry at times full of mischief and at others dreamy, but both longed with all their souls to place themselves some day in the front ranks among civil engineers.
At high school they had given especial study to mathematics. At home they had studied engineering, through correspondence courses and otherwise. During more than the last year of their home life our two boys had worked much in the offices of a local civil engineer, and had spent part of their school vacations afield with him.
"If 'bounced' we are," Tom remarked dryly, "we'll have to walk home, for our money will just barely take us to Colorado."
So here they were, having come by rail to a town some distance west of Pueblo. From the last railway station they had been obliged to make thirty miles or more by wagon to the mountain field camp of the S.B. & L.
Since daybreak they had been on the way, eating breakfast and lunch from the paper parcels that they had brought with them.
"How much farther is the camp, now that you know the way." Reade inquired an hour after Bad Pete had vanished on horseback.
"There it is, right down there," answered the Colorado youth, pointing with his whip as the raw-boned team hauled the wagon to the top of a rise in the trail.
Of the trail to the left, surrounded by natural walls of rock, was an irregularly shaped field about three or four acres in extent. Here and there wisps of grass grew, but the ground, for the most part, was covered by splinters of rock or of sand ground from the same.
At the farther end of the camp stood a small wooden building, with three tents near try. At a greater distance were several other tents. Three wagons stood at one side of the camp, though horses or mules for the same were not visible. Outside, near the door of one tent, stood a transit partially concealed by the enveloping rubber cover. Near another tent stood a plane table, used in field platting . Signs of life about the camp there were none, save for the presence of the newcomers.
"I wonder if there's anyone at home keeping house," mused Tom Reade, as he jumped down from the wagon.
"There's only one wooden house in this town. That must be where the boss lives," declared Harry.
"Yes; that's where the boss lives," replied the Colorado youth, with a wry smile.
"Let's go over and see whether he has time to talk to us," suggested Reade.
"Just one minute, gentlemen," interposed the driver. "Where do you want your kit boxes placed? Are you going to pay me now?"
"Drop the kit boxes on the ground anywhere," Tom answered. "We're strong enough to carry 'em when we find where they belong."
"Yes," replied the young driver, with the brevity of the mountaineer.
Tom and Harry went into their pockets, each producing nine dollars as his share of the fare. This was handed over to the Colorado youth.
"'Bliged to you, gentlemen," nodded the Colorado boy pocketing the money. "Anything more to say to me?"
"Nothing remains to be said, except to thank you, and to wish you good luck on your way back," said Reade.
"I wish you luck here, too, gentlemen. Good day."
With that, the driver mounted his seat, turned the horses about and was off without once looking back.
"Now let's go over to the house and see the boss," murmured Tom.
Together the chums skirted the camp, going up to the wooden building. As the door was open, Tom, with a sense of good manners, approached from the side that he might not appear to be peeping in on the occupants of the building. Gaining the side of the doorway, with Harry just behind him, Reade knocked softly.
"Quit yer kidding, whoever it is, and come in," called a rough voice.
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