The Donovan Chance

"I'm sure calling this stuff just about the limit, aren't you, Larry? Look at that stake you drove a few minutes ago――it's half drowned already!"

On this particular morning Dick and Larry had been given a new job, namely, reëstablishing grade stakes ahead of the graders. Ordinarily, there would have been no need for this duplication of the work of the locating engineers; but the ground over which they were toilsomely making their way was anything but ordinary. It was a steep canyon slope composed of the most unstable material that is ever found in the Pandora box of the great Continental Divide; a smooth, sharply inclined plane of crawling shale pouring down like a broad river from the heights above in bits from the size of a fingernail to that of a silver half-dollar, and each bit as sleek and slippery as a watermelon seed.