When Glover intercepted the visitors they had already been guided to the granite bench where his headquarters were fixed. With Mr. Brock had come the young men, Miss Donner, and Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney signalized her arrival by sitting down on a chest of dynamite--having intimidated the modest headquarters custodian by asking for a chair so imperiously that he was glad to walk away at her suggestion that he hunt one up--though there was not a chair within several miles. It had been no part of Glover's plan to receive his guests at that point, and his first efforts after the greetings were to coax them away from the interest they expressed in the equipment of an emergency headquarters, and get them back to where the track crossed the river. But when the young people learned that the blue-eyed boy at the little table on the rock could send a telegram or a cablegram for them to any part of the world, each insisted on putting a message through for the fun of the thing, and even Mrs. Whitney could hardly be coaxed from the illimitable possibilities just under her.
With a feeling of relief he got them away from the giant powder which Ed Smith's men were still bringing in, and across the river to the ledge that commanded the whole scene, and was safely removed from its activities.
Glover took ten minutes to point out to the president of the system the difficulties that would always confront the operating department in the cañon. He charted clearly for Mr. Brock the whole situation, with the hope that when certain very heavy estimates went before the directors one man at least would understand the necessity for them. Mr. Brock was a good questioner, and his interest turned constantly from the general observations offered by Glover to the work immediately in hand, which the engineer had no mind to exploit. The young people, however, were determined to see the blast, and it was only by strongly advising an early dinner and promising that they should have due notice of the blast that Glover got rid of his visitors at all.
He returned with them to the caboose in which they had come down, and when he got back to the work the big camp kettles were already slung along the bench, and the engine bringing the car of black powder was steaming slowing into the upper cañon. On a flat bowlder back of the cooks, Morris Blood, Ed Smith, and the roadmasters were sitting down to coffee and sandwiches, and Glover joined them. Men in relays were eating at the camp and dynamiters were picking their way across the face of the Cat's Paw with the giant powder. The engineers were still at their coffee-fire when the scream of a locomotive whistle came through the cañon from below. Blood looked up. "There's one of the fast mail engines, probably the 1026. Who in the world has brought her up?"
