

E-text prepared by Jim Ludwig



The Young Engineers in Colorado

or, At Railwood Building in Earnest

By  H. Irving Hancock







CONTENTS

CHAPTERS
    I. The Cub Engineers Reach Camp
   II. Bad Pete Becomes Worse
  III. The Day of Real Work Dawns
   IV. "Trying Out" the Gridley Boys
    V. Tom Doesn't Mind "Artillery"
   VI. The Bite from the Bush
  VII. What a Squaw Knew
 VIII. 'Gene Black, Trouble-Maker
   IX. "Doctored" Field Notes?
    X. Things Begin to go Down Hill
   XI. The Chief Totters from Command
  XII. From Cub to Acting Chief
 XIII. Black Turns Other Colors
  XIV. Bad Pete Mixes in Some
   XV. Black's Plot Opens With a Bang
  XVI. Shut Off from the World
 XVII. The Real Attack Begins
XVIII. When the Camp Grew Warm
  XIX. Sheriff Grease Drops Dave
   XX. Mr. Newnham Drops a Bomb
  XXI. The Trap at the Finish
 XXII. "Can Your Road Save Its Charter Now?"
XXIII. Black's Trump Card
 XXIV. Conclusion




CHAPTER I

THE CUB ENGINEERS REACH CAMP


"Look, Tom!  There is a real westerner!"  Harry Hazelton's eyes
sparkled, his whole manner was one of intense interest.

"Eh?" queried Tom Reade, turning around from his distant view
of a sharp, towering peak of the Rockies.

"There's the real thing in the way of a westerner," Harry Hazelton
insisted in a voice in which there was some awe.

"I don't believe he is," retorted Tom skeptically.

"You're going to say, I suppose, that the man is just some freak
escaped from the pages of a dime novel?" demanded Harry.

"No; he looks more like a hostler on a leave of absence from a
stranded Wild West show," Tom replied slowly.

There was plenty of time for them to inspect the stranger in question.
Tom and Harry were seated on a mountain springboard wagon drawn
by a pair of thin horses.  Their driver, a boy of about eighteen,
sat on a tiny make-believe seat almost over the traces.  This
youthful driver had been minding his own business so assiduously
during the past three hours that Harry had voted him a sullen
fellow.  This however, the driver was not.

"Where did that party ahead come from, driver?" murmured Tom,
leaning forward.  "Boston or Binghamton?"

"You mean the party ahead at the bend of the trail?" asked the
driver.

"Yes; he's the only stranger in sight."

"I guess he's a westerner, all right," answered the driver, after
a moment or two spent in thought.

"There!  You see?" crowed Harry Hazelton triumphantly.

"If that fellow's a westerner, driver," Tom persisted, "have you
any idea how many days he has been west?"

"He doesn't belong to this state," the youthful driver answered.
"I think he comes from Montana.  His name is Bad Pete."

"Pete?" mused Tom Reade aloud.  "That's short for Peter, I suppose;
not a very interesting or romantic name.  What's the hind-leg
of his name?"

"Meaning his surnames" drawled the driver.

"Yes; to be sure."

"I don't know that he has any surname, friend," the Colorado boy
rejoined.

"Why do they call him 'Bad'?" asked Harry, with a thrill of pleasurable
expectation.

As the driver was slow in finding an answer, Tom Reade, after
another look at the picturesque stranger, replied quizzically:

"I reckon they call him bad because he's counterfeit."

"There you go again," remonstrated Harry Hazelton.  "You'd better
be careful, or Bad Pete will hear you."

"I hope he doesn't," smiled Tom.  "I don't want to change Bad
Pete into Worse Pete."

There was little danger, however, that the picturesque-looking
stranger would hear them.  The axles and springs of the springboard
wagon were making noise enough to keep their voices from reaching
the ears of any human being more than a dozen feet away.

Bad Pete was still about two hundred and fifty feet ahead, nor
did he, as yet, give any sign whatever of having noted the vehicle.
Instead, he was leaning against a boulder at the turn in the
road.  In his left hand he held a hand-rolled cigarette from which
he took an occasional reflective puff as he looked straight ahead
of him as though he were enjoying the scenery.  The road---trail---ran
close along the edge of a sloping precipice.  Fully nine hundred
feet below ran a thin line of silver, or so it appeared.  In reality
it was what was left of the Snake River now, in July, nearly dried
out.

Over beyond the gulch, for a mile or more, extended a rather flat,
rock-strewn valley.  Beyond that were the mountains, two peaks
of which, even at this season, were white-capped with snow.  On
the trail, however, the full heat of summer prevailed.

"This grand, massive scenery makes a human being feel small, doesn't
it?" asked Tom.

Harry, however, had his eyes and all his thoughts turned toward
the man whom they were nearing.

"This---er---Bad Pete isn't an---er---that is, a road agent, is
he?" he asked apprehensively.

"He may be, for all I know," the driver answered.  "At present
he mostly hangs out around the S.B. & L. outfit."

"Why, that's our outfits---the one we're going to join, I mean,"
cried Hazelton.

"I hope Pete isn't the cook, then," remarked Tom fastidiously.
"He doesn't look as though he takes a very kindly interest in
soap."

"Sh-h-h!" begged Harry.  "I'll tell you, he'll hear you."

"See here," Tom went on, this time addressing the driver, "you've
told us that you don't know just where to find the S.B. & L. field
camp.  If Mr. Peter Bad hangs out with the camp then he ought
to be able to direct us."

"You can ask him, of course," nodded the Colorado boy.

Soon after the horses covered the distance needed to bring them
close to the bend.  Now the driver hauled in his team, and, blocking
the forward wheels with a fragment of rock, began to give his
attention to the harness.

Bad Pete had consented to glance their way at last.  He turned
his head indolently, emitting a mouthful of smoke.  As if by instinct
his right hand dropped to the butt of a revolver swinging in a
holster over his right hip.

"I hope he isn't bad tempered today!" shivered Harry under his
breath.

"I beg your pardon, sir," galled Tom, "but can you tell us-----"

"Who are ye looking at?" demanded Bad Pete, scowling.

"At a polished man of the world, I'm sure," replied Reade smilingly.
"As I was saying, can you tell us just where we can find the
S.B. & L.'s field camp of engineers?"

"What d'ye want of the camp?" growled Pete, after taking another
whiff from his cigarette.

"Why, our reasons for wanting to find the camp are purely personal,"
Tom continued.

"Now, tenderfoot, don't get fresh with me," warned Pete sullenly.

"I haven't an idea of that sort in the world, sir," Tom assured
him.  "Do you happen to know the hiding-place of the camp?"

"What do you want of the camp?" insisted Pete.

"Well, sir, since you're so determined to protect the camp from
questionable strangers," Tom continued, "I don't know that it
will do any harm to inform you that we are two greenhorns---tenderfeet,
I believe, is your more elegant word---who have been engaged to
join the engineers' crowd and break in at the business."

"Cub engineers, eh, tenderfoot?"

"That's the full size of our pretensions, sir," Tom admitted.

"Rich men's sons, coming out to learn the ways of the Rookies?"
questioned Bad Pete, showing his first sign of interest in them.

"Not quite as bad as that," Tom Reade urged.  "We're wholly respectable,
sir.  We have even had to work hard in order to raise money for
our railway fare out to Colorado."

Bad Pete's look of interest in them faded.

"Huh!" he remarked.  "Then you're no good either why."

"That's true, I'm afraid," sighed Tom.  "However, can you tell
us the way to the camp?"

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