Young Van, keyed up by this sudden plunge into frontier work, was only half listening to the flow of good-natured comment and reminiscence from the chief engineer at his elbow. He was looking at the steam-shrouded locomotive, and at the long line of cars stringing off in perspective behind it. Wagons were backed in against this and the few other trains which had come in during the day; other wagons were crawling about the track almost as far as he could see through the steam and the dust. Men on horseback--picturesque figures in wide-brimmed hats and blue shirts and snug-fitting boots laced to the knee--were riding in and out among the teams. The old track ended in the immediate foreground, and here old Van was at work with his young surveyors, looking up the old stakes and driving new ones to a line set by a solemn youngster with skinny hands and a long nose. Everywhere was noise--a babel of it--and toil and a hearty sort of chaos. One line of wagons--laden with scrapers, “slips” and “wheelers,” tents and camp equipage, the timbers and machinery of a pile-driver, and a thousand and one other things--was little by little extricating itself from the tangle, winding slowly past head-quarters, and on toward the low-lying, blood-red sun. This was the outfit of the second division, and Harry Scribner, riding a wiry black pony, was leading it into corral on “mile two,” preparatory to a start in the early morning. From the headquarters cook tent, behind the “office,” came savory odors. Farther down the knoll, near the big “boarding house” tents, the giant Flagg and the equally sturdy Charlie could be seen moving about a row of iron kettles which were swinging over an open fire. The chaos about the trains was straightening out, and the men were corralling the wagons, and unharnessing the mules and horses. The sun slipped down behind the low western hills, leaving a luminous memory in the far sky. In groups, and singly, the laborers--Mexicans, Italians, Louisiana French, broken plainsmen from everywhere, and negroes--came straggling by, their faces streaked with dust and sweat, the negroes laughing and singing as they lounged and shuffled along.