“Now, what in the mischief does all that mean?” mused the chief clerk, when Ford and his new track man had gone out.  “A month’s hunting trip over the range, with the surveying instruments taken along.  And last summer Mr. Ford spent a good part of his time over there—­also hunting, so he said.  Confound it all!  I wish I could get into that private drawer of his in the safe.  That would tell the story.  I wonder if Pacheco couldn’t make himself an errand over the Pass in the morning?  By George!” slapping his thigh and apostrophizing the superintendent, “I’ll just go you once, Mr. Ford, if I lose!”

Now the fruit, of which this little soliloquy was the opening blossom, matured on the second day after Ford and Frisbie had started out on the mysterious hunting trip across the range.  Pacheco, the half-breed Mexican who freighted provisions by jack train to the mining-camps on the head waters of the Pannikin, came in to report to the chief clerk.

“Well, ’Checo, what did you find out?” was the curt inquiry.

The half-breed spread his palms.

“W’at I see, I know.  Dey’ll not gone for hunt much.  One day out, dey’ll make-a da camp and go for squint t’rough spy-glass, so”—­making an imaginary transit telescope of his hands.  “Den dey’ll measure h-on da groun’ and squint some more, so.”

Penfield nodded and a gold piece changed hands silently.

“That’s all, ’Checo; much obliged.  Don’t say anything about this over in the camp.  Mr. Ford said he was going hunting, and that’s what we’ll say, if anybody asks us.”

That night the chief clerk sent a brief cipher telegram to the general manager at Denver.

Ford and his new track supervisor, who is really a high-priced constructing engineer, gone over the range for a month’s absence.  Gave it out here that they were going after big game, but they took a transit and are picking up the line of the old S. L. & W. extension in the upper Pannikin.

It was late in the month of June when Ford and Frisbie, tanned, weathered and as gaunt as pioneers, returned to Saint’s Rest; and for those who were curious enough to be interested, there were a couple of bear-skins and one of a mountain lion to make good the ostensible object of the absence.

But the most important trophies of the excursion were two engineers’ note-books, well filled with memoranda; and these they did not exhibit.  On the contrary, they became a part of the collection of maps, statistics, estimates and private correspondence which Chief Clerk Penfield was so anxious to examine, and which Ford kept under lock and key when he and Frisbie were not poring over some portion of it in the seclusion of the private office.

None the less, Penfield kept his eyes and ears open, and before long he had another detail to report by cipher telegram to the general manager.  Ford was evidently preparing for another absence, and from what the chief clerk could overhear, he was led to believe that the pseudo supervisor of track would be left in charge of Plug Mountain affairs.