There were no Bradfords.  Burgess and Blodgett were the only B’s, and the General was glad.  His desk was constantly littered with the “letters” of tenderfeet, and his office-tent filled with their portmanteaus, holding dress suits and fine linen.

Here was a curiosity—­a man with no press notices, no character, only one initial and two chasers.

“Show him in,” said the General, addressing the one luxury his hogan held.  A few moments later the chief engineer was looking into the eye of a young man, who returned the look and asked frankly, and without embarrassment, for work with the engineers.

“Impossible, young man—­full up,” was the brief answer.

“Now,” thought the General, “he’ll begin to beat his breast and haul out his ‘pull.’” The young man only smiled sadly, and said, “I’m sorry.  I saw an ‘ad’ for men in the Bee yesterday, and hoped to be in time,” he added, rising.

“Men!  Yes, we want men to drive mules and stakes, to grade, lay track, and fight Indians—­but engineers?  We’ve got ’em to use for cross-ties.”

“I am able and willing to do any of these things—­except the Indians—­and I’ll tackle that if nothing else offers.”

“There’s a man for you,” said the General to his assistant as Bradford went out with a note to Jack Casement, who was handling the graders, teamsters, and Indian fighters.  “No influential friends, no baggage, no character, just a man, able to stand alone—­a real man in corduroys and flannels.”

Coming up to the gang, Bradford singled out the man who was swearing loudest and delivered the note.  “Fall in,” said the straw boss, and Bradford got busy.  He could handle one end of a thirty-foot rail with ease, and before night, without exciting the other workmen or making any show of superiority, he had quietly, almost unconsciously, become the leader of the track-laying gang.  The foreman called Casement’s attention to the new man, and Casement watched him for five minutes.

Two days later a big teamster, having found a bottle of fire-water, became separated from his reasoning faculties, crowded under an old dump-cart, and fell asleep.

“Say, young fellow,” said the foreman, panting up the grade to where Bradford was placing a rail, “can you skin mules?”

“I can drive a team, if that’s what you mean,” was the reply.

“How many?”

“Well,” said Bradford, with his quiet smile, “when I was a boy I used to drive six on the Montpelier stage.”

So he took the eight-mule team and amazed the multitude by hauling heavier loads than any other team, because he knew how to handle his whip and lines, and because he was careful and determined to succeed.  Whatever he did he did it with both hands, backed up by all the enthusiasm of youth and the unconscious strength of an absolutely faultless physique, and directed by a remarkably clear brain.  When the timekeeper got killed, Bradford took his place, for he could “read writin’,” an accomplishment rare among the laborers.  When the bookkeeper got drunk he kept the books, working overtime at night.