From his belt swung a sheath holding a heavy gun.

“Wal, go ahaid,” added Neale, mimicking his comrade. “An’ I shore hope that this heah time you-all get aboot enough of your job.”

One by one the engineers returned from different points along the wall, and they joined the group around Neale and King.

“Test that rope,” ordered General Lodge.

The long rope appeared to be amply strong. When King fastened one end around his body under his arms, the question arose among the engineers, just as it had arisen for Neale, whether or not it was needful to let the lineman down before the surveyor.

“I reckon I’ll go ahaid,” said King. Like all Texans of his type, Larry Red King was slow, easy, cool, careless. Moreover he gave a singular impression of latent nerve, wildness, violence.

There seemed all assurance of a deadlock, when General Lodge stepped forward, and addressed his inquiry to Neale.

“Red thinks the rope will break. So he wants to go first,” replied Neale.

There were broad smiles forthcoming, yet no one laughed. This was one of the thousands of strange human incidents that must be enacted in the building of the railroad. It might have been humorous, but it was big. It fixed the spirit and it foreshadowed events. All this shone in General Lodge’s stern face.

“Obey orders,” he admonished King.

The loop was taken from King’s waist and transferred to Neale’s, and then all was made ready to let the daring surveyor with his instrument down over the wall.

Neale took one more look down the rugged front of the cliff. When he straightened up, the ruddy bronze had left his face.

“There’s a bulge of rock. I can’t see what’s below it,” he said. “No use for signals. I’ll go down the length of the rope and trust to find a footing. I can’t be hauled up.”

They all conceded this, silently. Then Neale sat down, let his legs dangle over the wall, firmly grasped his instrument, and said to the troopers who held the rope: “All right.”

They lowered him foot by foot.

It was windy up there. The dust flew up from under the wall. Black canyon swifts, like swallows, darted with wildly rustling wings, uttering frightened twitterings. The engineers leaned over, watching Neale’s progress. Larry Red King did not look over the precipice. He seemed uncertain, waiting. He watched the slowly slipping rope as knot by knot it passed over. It fascinated him.

“He’s reached the bulge of rock!” called Baxter, craning his neck.

“There, he’s down . . . out of sight!” exclaimed Henney.

Casey, the flagman, leaned farther out than any other.

“Phwat a domn’ strange way to build a railroad, I sez,” he remarked.

The gorge lay asleep in the westering sun, silent, full of blue haze. Seen from this height, far above the break when the engineers had first halted, it had the dignity and dimensions of a canyon. Its walls had begun to change color in the sunset light.

Foot by foot the soldiers let the rope slip until probably two hundred feet had been let out, and there were scarcely a hundred left. By this time all that part of the cable that had been made of lassoes had passed over; the remainder consisted of pieces of worn and knotted and frayed rope at which the engineers began to gaze fearfully.

“I don’t like this,” said Henney nervously. “Neale surely ought to have found a ledge or bench or slope by now.”

Instinctively the soldiers held back, reluctantly yielding inches when before they had slacked feet.