"I think it's a railroad!" gasped the telephone operator as she called me to the booth. Her eyes were bright. It was as if a Frenchman had said, "Berlin is taken!" But I, a skeptic hardened by many shattered hopes, smiled incredulously. Nevertheless, I took the receiver with a tremor born of undying optimism--the optimism of the railless land. "It's long distance," whispered the operator, torn between a sense of duty and a desire to eavesdrop. "Hello!" The only answer was a grinding buzz; a mile or two of Shaniko line was down--it usually was. Then Prineville cut in and The Dalles said something cross and a faint inquiry came from Portland, far away. Yes, I was waiting. "Hello, Putnam?" The speaker was the managing editor of a Portland newspaper. "Gangs have broken loose in the Deschutes Canyon," said he. "One of 'em is Harriman, we know, but the others are playing dark. Think it's Hill starting for California. You go--" then the buzz became too bad. Finally The Dalles repeated the instructions. I was to go down the Canyon of the Deschutes and find out all about it. The head and nearest end of the Canyon was fifty miles away, and the Canyon itself was one hundred miles long. Glory be! But it was a railroad, and before I started the town was in the first throes of apoplectic celebration. I went to Shaniko by auto, and thence by train to Grass Valley, midway to the Columbia. From Grass Valley a team took me westward to the rim of the Canyon of the Deschutes. There were fresh survey stakes and a gang of engineers working with their instruments on a hillside. Very obliging, were those engineers; they would tell me anything; they were building a railroad; it was headed for Mexico City and they themselves were the owners! Below was a new-made camp, where Austrians labored on a right of way that had come to life almost over night. This was a Harriman camp; orders were, apparently, to get a strangle hold on the best line up the narrow Canyon--to crowd the other fellows out. But the mystery surrounding those "other fellows" clung close. From water boy to transit man they knew nothing, except that they were working for a famous contracting firm and that they emphatically were not in the employ of Hill interests. [Illustration: Crooked River Canyon, now spanned by a railroad bridge] [Illustration: In the Deschutes Canyon. "The river winds sinuously, seeking first one, and then another, point of the compass" Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.] This, which was no news at all, I 'phoned to Portland, and then set about visiting the suddenly awakened Canyon.