. nothing can stop me,” declared his chief.

The troopers sent to follow Larry Red King came back to camp saying that they had lost him and that they could not find any place where it was possible to get down into the gorge.

In the morning King had not returned.

Detachments of troopers were sent in different directions to try again. And the engineers went out once more to attack their problems. Success did not attend the efforts of either the troopers or the engineers. And at sunset, when all had wearily returned to camp, Larry Red King was still absent. Then he was given up for lost.

But before dark the tall cowboy limped into camp, dusty and torn, carrying Neale’s long tripod and surveying instrument. It looked the worse for a fall, but apparently was not badly damaged. King did not give the troopers any satisfaction. Limping on to the tents of the engineers, he set down the instrument and called. Boone was the first to come out, and his call brought Henney, Baxter, and younger members of the corps. General Lodge, sitting at his campfire some rods away and bending over his drawings, did not see King’s arrival.

No one detected any difference in the cowboy, except that he limped. Slow, cool, careless, he was yet somehow vital and impelling.

“Wal, we run the line around . . . five miles up the gorge whar crossin’ is easy . . . an’ only ninety feet grade to the mile.”

The engineers looked at him as if he were crazy.

“But Neale! He fell . . . he’s dead!” exclaimed Henney.

“Daid? Wal, no, Neale ain’t daid,” drawled King.

“Where is he, then?”

“I reckon he’s comin’ along back heah.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Shore. An’ hungry, too, which is what I am,” replied Larry, and he limped away.

Some of the engineers hurried out in the gathering dusk to meet Neale while the others went to General Lodge with the good news.

The chief received this quietly with intent eyes.

“Bring Neale and King here . . . as soon as their needs have been seen to,” he ordered. Then he called after Baxter: “Ninety feet to the mile . . . you said?”

“Ninety foot grade, so King reported.”

“By all that’s lucky,” breathed the chief, as if his load had been immeasurably lightened. “Send those boys to me.”

Some of the soldiers had found Neale down along the trail and were helping him into camp.