“Say, I reckon you ain’t done this sort of thing for some time, have you? I guess a short spell at flagging wouldn’t discourage you. Go up to the tool-house, and get a white flag that you’ll find there. Then go up to that point back there, where the wagon road crosses the grade. I’ll put another flagman on the point below, and when he waves, you stop anything that comes along. In a few minutes we are going to “shoot” all along here, and I don’t want to blow up any teams or people that are going up to the copper camp.”

Loring dropped his pick with alacrity, and started for the tool-shed. As he walked back along the grade, he looked with curious interest at the men who were still working. Somehow their labors seemed a part of himself. His back ached sympathetically as they stooped to their work. At the shed he found the dirty white rag and stick which served for flagging.[30] Then he hurried to his place. He passed Sullivan, who waved joyously to him.

[30]

“The boss has set me flagging, too. Gee, what a graft! Me for a nap, as soon as they start to shoot. There won’t any teams go by, when they hear the shots, and I can get a good sleep.”

“You had better not,” answered Loring. Then, feeling that it was none of his business, he went on to the place which McKay had assigned to him. He seated himself on a large rock, from which he could see far in all directions. He was at the end of the grade nearest to the copper camp, and he could see the great iron chimneys of the smelter, protruding above the hills to the north, belching forth black smoke against the brilliant blue of the sky. “The whole country looks as if it had been made with a hack-saw,” he mused, as he looked at the jagged rocks and irregular mountains about him. “I would give a great deal to see something green besides this accursed cactus; but I suppose that grass and civilization go together.”

Then, watching for a signal, he fixed his eyes on the point of rock where Sullivan was stationed. After a few minutes he saw, against[31] the brown background of the rocks, a spot of white move quickly up and down. He immediately ran out into the road, and stopped a line of coke teams that was coming down from the camp. The drivers merely threw on their brakes, and let the thin-boned, almost transparent horses tug uselessly at the traces, until they discovered the vainness of the effort. Then horses, like drivers, relapsed into the comatose acceptance of conditions, which in the land of the cactus becomes part of man and beast. McKay came up on horseback, calling out to the first of the 

 Prev. P 16/161 next