"Mr. Thurston isn't going to drop us," Tom declared. "Mr. Blaisdell,
Hazelton and I are here and we're going to hang on if we have
to do it with our teeth. We're going to know how to do what's
required of us if we have to stay up all night finding out. We've
just got to make good, for we haven't any money with which to
get home or anywhere else. Besides, if we can't make good here
we're not fit to be tried out anywhere else."

"We're in an especially hard fix, you see," the assistant engineer
explained. "When we got our charter something less than two years
ago we undertook to have every mile of track ballasted and laid
on the S.B. & L., and trains running through, by September 30th
of this year. There are three hundred and fifty-four miles of
road in all. Now, in July, less than three months from the time,
this camp is forty-nine miles from the terminus of the road at
Loadstone, while the constructing engineers and the track-layers
are thirty-eight miles behind us. Do you see the problem?"

"You can get an extension of time, can't you?" asked Tom.

"We can---_not_! You see, boys, the S.B. & L. is the popular
road. That is, it's the one that the people of this state backed
in the main. When we got our charter from the legislature there
was a lot of opposition from the W.C. & A. railroad. That organization
wishes to add to their road, using the very locations that our
preliminary engineering force selected for the S.B. & L. The
W.C. & A. folks have such a bewildering number of millions at
their back that they would have won away from us, had they been
an American crowd. The W.C. & A. has only American officers
and a few small stockholders in this country. The W.C. & A.