They could not know, these silent heroes fighting far out in the wilderness, what a glorious country they were conquering—­what an empire they were opening for all the people of the land.  Occasionally there came to the men at the front old, worn newspapers, telling wild stories of the failure of the enterprise.  At other times they heard of changes in the Board of Directors, the election of a new President, tales of jobs and looting, but they concerned themselves only with the work in hand.  No breath of scandal ever reached these pioneer trail-makers, or, if it did, it failed to find a lodging-place, but blew by.  Ample opportunity they had to plunder, to sell supplies to the Indians or the Mormons, but no one of the men who did the actual work of bridging the continent has ever been accused of a selfish or dishonest act.

During his second winter of service Bradford slept away out in the Rockies, studying the snowslides and drifts.  For three winters they did this, and in summer they set stakes, keeping one eye out for Indians and the other for wash-outs, and when, after untold hardships, privation, and youth-destroying labor, they had located a piece of road, out of the path of the slide and the washout, a well-groomed son of a politician would come up from the Capital, and, in the capacity of Government expert, condemn it all.  Then strong men would eat their whiskers and the weaker ones would grow blasphemous and curse the country that afforded no facilities for sorrow-drowning.

Once, at the end of a long, hard winter, when spring and the Sioux came, they found Bradford and a handful of helpers just breaking camp in a sheltered hollow in the hills.  Hiding in the crags, the warriors waited until Bradford went out alone to try to shoot a deer, and incidentally to sound a drift, and then they surrounded him.  He fought until his gun was unloaded, and then emptied his revolver; but ever dodging and crouching from tree to rock, the red men, whose country he and his companions had invaded, came nearer and nearer.  In a little while the fight was hand to hand.  There was not the faintest show for escape; to be taken alive was to be tortured to death, so he fought on, clubbing his revolver until a well-directed blow from a war club caught the gun, sent it whirling through the top of a nearby cedar, and left the pathfinder empty-handed.  The chief sprang forward and lifted his hatchet that had caused more than one paleface to bite the dust.  For the faintest fraction of a second it stood poised above Bradford’s head, then out shot the engineer’s strong right arm, and the Indian lay flat six feet away.

For a moment the warriors seemed helpless with mingled awe and admiration, but when Bradford stooped to grab his empty rifle they came out of their trance.  A dull blow, a sense of whirling round swiftly, a sudden sunset, stars—­darkness, and all pain had gone!

III