The Road Builders

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Merwin Samuel. The Road Builders

CHAPTER I. YOUNG VAN ENGAGES A COOK

CHAPTER II. WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM

CHAPTER III. AT MR. CARHART’S CAMP

CHAPTER IV. JACK FLAGG SEES STARS

CHAPTER V. WHAT THEY FOUND AT THE WATER-HOLE

CHAPTER VI. THE ROAD TO TOTAL WRECK

CHAPTER VII. THE SPIRIT OF THE JOB

CHAPTER VIII. SHOTS – AND A SCOUTING PARTY

CHAPTER IX. A SHOW-DOWN

CHAPTER X. WHAT TOOK PLACE AT RED HILLS

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Doubtless there were official persons to be found at the time of this narrative – which is a matter of some thirty years back – who would have insisted that the letters “S. & W.” meant “Sherman and Western.” But every one who lived within two days’ ride of the track knew that the real name of the road was the “Shaky and Windy.”

Shaky the “S. & W.” certainly was – physically, and, if newspaper gossip and apparent facts were to be trusted, financially. The rails weighed thirty-five pounds to the yard, and had been laid in scallops, with high centres and low joints, – “sight along the rails and it looks like a washboard,” said John Flint, describing it. For ballast the clay and sand of the region were used. And, as for the financial part, everybody knew that old De Reamer had been forced to abandon the construction work on the Red Hills extension, after building fully five-sixths of the distance. The hard times had, of course, something to do with that, – roads were going under all through the West; receiverships were quite the common thing, – but De Reamer and the S. & W. did not seem to revive so quickly as certain other lines. This was the more singular in that the S. & W., extending as it did from the Sabine country to the Staked Plains, really justified the popular remark that “the Shaky and Windy began in a swamp and ended in a desert.” On the face of things, without the Red Hills connection with the bigger C. & S. C., and without an eastern connection with one of the New Orleans or St. Louis lines, the road was an absurdity.

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“‘Got to wait for the Lake Shore Express to go through,’ said I.

“Charlie sort of groaned at this and for an hour we sat there and waited. I tried to talk about the oil explosion down by Titusville, but Charlie, somehow, wasn’t interested. All the while those engines were blowing off tremendous, and the crews were sitting around just smoking steady.

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