East and west and north and south the
construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments,
the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the
side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand
tons' more material were flung out to hold the river in place.
Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the
country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the
humming village of five thousand work-men; up stream and down, along the
vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening
in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers--and only he knew how strong
those were--and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good.
There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few
weeks' work on the girders of the three middle piers--his bridge, raw
and ugly as original sin, but pukka--permanent--to endure when all
memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, has
perished. Practically, the thing was done.
Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted
securely over trestle, and nodded to his chief.
"All but," said he, with a smile.
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