in the Yavapai.

Loring found a place on one of the rickety benches, and looked toward the coffee-bucket.[23] Sullivan, who was opposite to him, growled gloomily: “Say, the grub is rank. This coffee is festered water.” The description, though not an appetizing one with which to begin a meal, was not without truth. In varying degree it might have been applied to the rest of the breakfast, from the red, tasteless frijollas to the stew, which consisted of a few shreds of over-cooked meat, in the midst of a nondescript mass of questionable grease.

[23]

As Loring had finished eating what he could of the meal, and was contemplating borrowing some tobacco, the foremen, who, as etiquette demands, had eaten their breakfast in a group apart from the men, began to look at their watches, and to stir about actively.

“Hurry up now, boys! Out on the grade—quick! Vamos! Only five minutes more now!” they called.

The tools of the old workmen were scattered along the grade, where each had dropped them at the end of the previous day’s work. The newcomers were marched single file, through the tool-house, where each picked out his implements, then started off to the place assigned him. Loring, not from altruism, but because[24] he did not know the difference which well chosen tools make in a long day’s toil, made no effort to grab. In consequence he emerged from the shed supplied with a split shovel, and a dull, loose-headed pick. A foreman beckoned him to a place on the grade, opposite to the cook tent. He immediately started to swing his pick.

[24]

“Don’t be in such a hell of a hurry!” called Sullivan, “you’ll have plenty to do later.”

The seven o’clock whistle blew sharply. “Lope her, boys!” sang out the section foreman. All talking stopped abruptly, and the click of picks, swung with steady blows, and the rasp of shovels echoed all along the grade. Loring, new to “mucking,” swung his pick with all the strength of his back, bringing it down, with rigid full arm strokes, upon the rocky soil. The foreman noticed this with amusement. “He’ll bust in an hour,” he thought; but he only said: “Loosen your grip a bit or you’ll get stone-bruises.” Then he passed on up the line, to tell a Mexican, who had already stopped to light a cigarette, that “this ain’t no rest cure.”

Hop Wah from the depths of the cook tent perceived Loring’s energetic labors, and 

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