the railroad was chartered on condition that it run through certain
towns. Paloma, here, is one of the towns. So the road has to come
here."

"But couldn't the road shift, just after it leaves here?" insisted
Clarence.

"Oh, certainly. Yet, if the road shifted enough to avoid any
possibility of resting on the big Man-killer, then it would have to go
through the range beyond here--would have to tunnel under the hills for
a distance of three miles. That would cost millions of dollars. No,
sir; the railroad will have to lay tracks across the Man-killer, or else
it will have to stand a loss so great as to cripple the road."

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted a keen, brisk, breezy-looking man, who had
entered the shop only a moment or two before. "There's a way that the
railroad can get over the Man-killer."

"What is that?" asked Duff, eyeing the newcomer's reflected image in the
mirror.

"The first thing to do," replied the stranger, "is to drop these boy
engineers out of the game. These youngsters came down here four days
ago, looked over the scene, and promised that they could get the tracks
laid-safely--for about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"Pooh!" jeered Duff, with a sidelong glance at young Farnsworth.

"Of course it is pooh!" laughed the stranger. "The thing can it be done
for any such amount as that, and it is a crazy idea, to take the