“The president is all but completely gone to pieces,” Reade confided to his chum.  “Say, but I’m glad Mr. Newnham himself isn’t the one who has to get the road through in time.  If it rested with him I’m afraid he’d fizzle.  But we’ll pull it through, Harry, old chum—–­we’ll pull it through.”

“If this thing had to last a month more I’m afraid good old Tom would go to pieces himself,” thought Harry, as he watched his friend stride away.  “Tom never gets to his cot now before eleven at night, and four thirty in the morning always finds him astir again.  I wonder if he thinks he’s fooling me by looking so blamed cheerful and talking so confidently.  Whew!  I’d be afraid for poor old Tom’s brain if anything should happen to trip us up.”

Harry himself was anxious, but he was not downright nervous.  He did not feel things as keenly as did his chum; neither was Hazelton directly responsible for the success of the big undertaking.

Mile after mile the construction work stretched.  Trains were running now for work purposes, nearly as far as the line extended.

The telegraph wires ran into the temporary station building at Lineville, and the several operators along the line were busy carrying orders through the length of the wire service.

Back at Stormburg, where the railroad line began, three trains lay on side tracks.  These were passenger trains that were to run the entire length of the road as soon as it was opened.

Back at Stormburg, also, the new general superintendent slept at his office that he might receive messages from President Newnham the more quickly.

At Bakerstown a division superintendent was stationed, he, too, sleeping at his office.

Once more Tom Reade had brought his work within sight of Lineville.  In fact, the track extended all but the last mile of the line.  Ties were down nearly all of the way to the terminal station.

This was the state of affairs at two o’clock in the afternoon.  Before midnight the last rail must be laid, and the first through train from Stormburg must run in.  If, at the stroke of midnight, the first train had failed to go through, then the charter of the S.B. & L. would be forfeited and subject to seizure and sale by the state.

Up from Denver some of the worst politicians had come.  They were quartered at the new little hotel in Lineville.  Dave Fulsbee had detailed three of his men covertly to watch these same politicians.

Tom, inwardly consumed with fever, outwardly as cheery as human being might be, stood watching the laying of the rails over that last stretch.  The men who could be prevented from dropping in their tracks must work until the last rail had been spiked into place.  Away up in Lineville Harry Hazelton was personally superintending the laying of the last ties.

The honk of an automobile horn caused Tom Reade to glance up.  Approaching him was President Newnham, himself driving the runabout that he had had forwarded.