the dirt here and dump it on top of that quicksand, and still the
quicksand would settle lower and lower and the tracks would still break
up and disappear. There's no bottom to that quicksand."

"Of course you ought to know all about it, Duff," Clarence made haste to
answer. "You've lived here for years, and you know all about this
section of the country."

That didn't quite suit the gambler. What he sought to do was to raise
an argument with the young man--who still had some money left.

"What makes you think, Farnsworth, that the railroad can win out with
the desert and lay tracks across the quicksand? That's a bad quicksand,
you know. It has been called the 'Man-killer.' Many a prospector or
cow-puncher has lost his life in trying to get over that sand."

"The real Man-killer quicksand is a mile to the south of where the
tracks go, isn't it?" asked Farnsworth.

"Yes; and the first party of railway surveyors who went over the line
for their track thought they had dodged the Man-killer. Yet what
they'll find, in the end, is that the Man-killer is a bad affair, and
that it extends, under the earth, in many directions and for long
distances. I am certain that railway tracks will never be laid over any
part of the Man-killer."

"Perhaps not," assented Clarence meekly.

"What makes you think that the railroad can ever get across the Man-
killer?" persisted Duff.