"Land Service and Reclamation men have tougher jobs and less glory. All we have to do is sit tight and it's a pretty good place to sit tight in--this out-door world. Different with the other fellows! They're hamstrung by the red tape of office, or blackguarded by some peanut politician who is scoring an opponent! There was Walker down at Durango, shot examining a coal fraud. He was a Land Office man; and his murderers have not even been punished. Then, there were the two chaps, who ran the rapids before the Gunnison Tunnel could be built; though that's been exaggerated with a lot of magazine hog-wash to make a fellow sick! Biggest job there was the engineer's work. Do you know he drove that six mile tunnel from both ends and, when the two ends met, they were not two inches off? Hog-wash and dish-water hacks spread themselves in the magazines all over those chaps running the rapids! You've run ten times worse rapids, yourself, on Saskatchewan and MacKenzie hundreds of times. Yet those chaps--not one of them--noted the wonder of a tunnel driven from both ends coming out exactly even. Why, the poor ignorant foreign workmen cried when they met from both ends, got hold of one fellow's wrist through the mud wall and pulled him through bodily, cried like kids at the victory of it! Your town hack didn't know what it meant to be a sand hog under ground for years and come through to daylight like that. The ignorant foreigner knew. I guess a good dozen of 'em had sacrificed their lives to the work. They knew the quiet engineer fellow had conquered the earth; and that fellow doesn't get the salary of a Wall Street stenographer--a way Uncle Sam has. They'd give such a man a title and a fifty thousand a year pension in England or Germany. "Then, there was Fessenden, unearthed a lot of fraud in Oregon and got himself crucified--got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury. Then, there was Carrington. He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad. She was delicate--lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her. She died there in the heat. Two or three of the men gave up their jobs to help bring the body out." Wayland land paused, lost in thought. "They got the body out all right; but, the horror of it, Carrington went off his head! Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads--but what's the use of talking about it? These things have to be done; and these are the men on the job." "The Men on the Job," slowly repeated Matthews, "the men we make earls and premiers of in Britain; but who of your big public cares one jot? Time you wakened up as a Nation."