It was a week after this farewell supper in the caboose hotel at Saint’s Rest when Ford went down to Denver to borrow, on his P. S-W. stock, the ten thousand dollars to be deposited to the credit of the Bank of Copah.  Following him, and only one train behind, came Frisbie, new from a confirmatory survey of the extension beyond the Copah district.

On his return from the Green Butte end of the proposed line, the little man with the diabolical fashion of beard trimming had spent a week in and around Copah, picking up yard rights-of-way, surveying approaches, and setting grade stakes for the outlying MacMorrogh gangs.  During that week he had made a discovery, and since he believed it to be all his own, he journeyed eastward to share it quickly with his chief.

Ford was dining alone at the Brown Palace when Frisbie, coming straight from the Plug Mountain train, found him.  There was an entire western desert to be talked over during the courses, and Frisbie held his discovery in reserve until they had gone to smoke in a quiet corner of the great rotunda.  Even then he approached it indirectly.

“In taking up the line down the Pannikin we have followed the old S. L & W. survey pretty closely all the way from start to finish.  What were your reasons, Stuart?” he asked.

“There didn’t seem to be any good reason for not following it.  Brandreth made the S. L & W. preliminary, and there isn’t a better locating engineer in this country.”

“I know,” said Frisbie.  “But the best of us make mistakes, now and then.  Brandreth made a pretty sizable one, I think.”

“How is that?”

“You know where the big rock-cutting is to be made in the lower canyon, about ten miles this side of the point where we begin to swing south for the run to Copah—­a mile and a half of heavy work that will cost away up into the pictures?”

“Yes; I’ve estimated that rock work at not a cent less than two hundred thousand dollars.”

“You’re shy, rather than over, at that.  And two hundred thousand would build a number of miles of ordinary railroad, wouldn’t it?  But that isn’t all.  The cliffs along that canyon are shale-topped and shale-undermined, the shale alternating with loose rock about fifty feet above our line of grade in quarter-mile stretches all along.  That means incessant track-walking day and night through the mile and a half of cutting, and afterward—­for all time afterward—­a construction train kept handy under steam to clear away debris that will never quit sliding down on the embankment.”

“I’m afraid you are right,” said Ford.  “It’s the worst bit on the entire extension; the most costly to build, as it will be the most expensive to maintain.  But I guess Brandreth knew what he was about when he surveyed it.”

“Brandreth is a short-line man.  He wouldn’t lengthen his line ten miles to dodge an earthquake.  Ford, we can save a hundred thousand dollars on that piece of track in first cost—­to say nothing of the future.”