Rutter, like a good chief, saw to it that his two assistants and the chainmen were started on their meal ere he himself began.  In half an hour every morsel of food and the final drop of coffee had disappeared.

“Twenty minutes to loaf,” advised Rutter, throwing himself on the ground and closing his eyes.  “I’ll take a nap.  You’d better follow my example.”

“Then who’ll call us?” asked Tom.

“I will,” gaped Rutter.

“Without a clock to ring an alarm?”

“Humph!  Any real backwoods engineer can wake up in twenty minutes if he sets his mind on it,” retorted Jack.

This was a fact, though it was the first that Tom or Harry had heard of it.

“See the time?” called Rutter, holding out his watch.  “Twenty minutes of one.  I’ll call you at one o’clock—–­see if I don’t.”

In that fine air, with all the warmth of the noon hour, there was no difficulty in going to sleep.  Truth to tell, Tom and Harry had tramped so far that forenoon that they were decidedly tired.  Within sixty seconds both “cubs” were sound asleep.

“One o’clock!” called Rutter, sitting up and consulting his watch.  “Fall to, slaves!  There is a big batch of work awaiting us.  Hazelton, you can go right on where you left off.  Survey along carefully until you come upon a stake marked ‘Reade.’  Then come forward until you find us.  Reade, I’ll go along with you and show you where to break in.”

Preceded by their chainmen, Rutter and Reade trudged along the trail for something like a mile.

“Halt,” ordered Jack Rutter.  “Reade, write your autograph on that stake and begin.”

Tom stepped over to the transit, adjusting it carefully and setting the hanging plummet on dead centre with the nail head in the top of the short stake.

“Never set up a transit again,” directed Rutter, “without making sure that your levels are absolutely true, and that your vernier arrangement is in order.”

“I don’t believe you’ll ever catch me at that, Mr. Rutter,” Tom answered, busying himself with the finer adjustments of the transit.  “Mr. Price pounded that into me every time that he took me out in the field.”

“Nevertheless,” went on Rutter, “I have known older engineers than you, Reade, who became careless, and their carelessness cost their employers a lot of wasted time and money.  Now, you-----”

At this juncture Jack Rutter suddenly crouched behind a low ledge at the right.

“Get behind here, quickly, Reade!” called Rutter.   “Bad Pete is
up the hillside, about two hundred yards from you-----”

“I haven’t time to bother with him, now,” Tom broke in composedly.

“Duck fast, boy!  Pete has an ugly grin on his face, and he’s reaching for his pistol.  He’s got it out—–­he’s going to shoot!” whispered Rutter, drawing his head down where it would be safe from flying bullets.

The chainmen, lounging nearby, had wasted no time in getting safely to cover.