“Your guess is as good as anybody’s,” said Ford curtly.  “Better get back to the car as quickly as you can, before Mr. Colbrith whistles us down to find out what has become of you.”

Below the camp of the surfacers there were a few miles of better track, and Hector made fair time until the train circled the mountain shoulder at the lower end of the great loop.  Beyond this the roughnesses began again, and there were more of the skimped rock cuttings.  At Ten Mile, which was a relay station in the upper canyon for the halting of supplies and material for which there was no room at the ever-advancing “front,” they stopped to try for track-clearings.

As Leckhard had foretold, the operator could give them little help.  Two hours earlier, a train of empties in two sections had left the end-of-track, coming eastward.  Whether it was hung up at one of the intervening side-tracks, or was still coming, the operator could not say; and there were no means of finding out.  Also, Mr. Frisbie, who had reached Riley’s camp late in the afternoon, had left there after supper and was somewhere on the line with his light engine—­probably on his way to the front, the operator thought.

Hector removed his great weight from the telegraph counter and the woodwork creaked its relief.  What he said was indicative of his frame of mind.

“Humph!” he growled.  “If we don’t get tangled up with Mr. Frisbie’s light engine, it’s us for a head-ender with the string of empties.  Isn’t that about it, Mr. Ford?”

“That’s it, precisely.”

“Which means that Jimmy Shovel trots ahead of us for a hundred mile ’r so, carryin’ a lantern like a blame’ Dio-geenes huntin’ for an honest man.”

“That is the size of it,” said Ford; but just then the sounder on the table began to click and the operator held up his hand for silence.

“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted, “here’s a piece of luck—­it’s Mr. Frisbie, cutting in with his field set from Camp Frierson.  He is asking Saint’s Rest about you.”

“Break in and tell him we’re here,” said Ford; and when it was done:  “Ask him about that string of empties.”

The reply was apparently another piece of luck.  Frisbie, going westward, had passed the first section of the freight train at Siding Number Twelve.  It was hung up with a broken draw-head on the engine, and was safe to stay there, Frisbie thought, until somebody came along with a repair kit, which, it might be assumed, would not be before morning.

At this point Ford went around the counter and took the wire for a little personal talk with the first assistant.  It ignored the stalled freight train, and Ford’s rapid clickings spelled out an order.  Frisbie was to drop everything else, and constitute himself the president’s avant-courrier to the end-of-track camp, which, at the moment, happened to be the MacMorroghs’ headquarters at the mouth of Horse Creek.  All liquor-selling was to be stopped, the saloons closed, and the strictest order maintained during the president’s stay—­this if it should take the entire field force of the engineering department to bring it to pass.