Page:Ralph Paine--The Steam-Shovel Man.djvu/153

 steam-shovel man with the high record for excavating in the Cut can go straight to the colonel on business a whole lot less important than this."

"Can we see him to-night?"

"No. There is no train to Culebra. But, lucky for us, to-morrow is Sunday, and he holds open court in his office, early in the morning. It is then that any man on the job with a kick, growl, or grievance can talk it over with the colonel. I will go to your hotel with you, Alfaro, and we will hop aboard the first train out. It will be only a few hours lost and that condemned old junk-heap of a Juan Lopez will not be many miles on her way to San Salvador."

Greatly comforted, the Colombian exclaimed with much feeling: "Next to the colonel, I think you are the biggest man on the Isthmus, Señor Devlin."

"I can handle a steam-shovel with any of them, and I aim to stand by my friends," was the self-satisfied reply.

Before eight o'clock next morning they were waiting in a large, plainly furnished room of a barn-like office building perched on the