"No, lads, I don't care to go," he said, with a smile. "I reckon I'm a heap sight more comfortable here than I would be tramping around in the sun. I'm getting too old to get much pleasure out of such trips. You two go and enjoy yourselves. I'll stay and look out for things."
"We'll have to move camp in a few days," Charley remarked, as they paused on the grade for a few minutes to glance over the work that had been done since they had bought out Murphy. "The machine is getting too far from camp. It gives the men too long a walk, and wastes a lot of time. Well, I can't see but what everything is running smooth now," he concluded with satisfaction.
And, in truth, the boys had reason to be satisfied with the way things were going. From ahead of the machine came the sound of axe and the sharp report of dynamite, as the right-of-way men cleared a path for the machine. The machine itself was swinging back and forth with the regularity of clockwork. Back of the machine followed the graders, leveling off the thrown-up dirt, while behind them came the bridge builders, constructing bridges over the gaps left by the machine. Everywhere was bustle.
SUNRISE found the boys well on their way to Indiantown. By nine o'clock they were entering the jungle where Charley had been fired at on his previous trip. Before entering it, however, the lads stopped and cut two long slender poles with which to kill the moccasins basking on the road.
This time no rifle bullets halted their progress, but the snakes were there, and, by the time they had passed out of the jungle they had slaughtered over fifty of the loathsome creatures.
"Whew!" exclaimed Walter, as they broke out of the darkness of the jungle, "that's the most awful place I was ever in. It fairly reeks with rottenness and fever."
"Yes," Charley assented. "I dread putting the machine into it, but it's got to be done. I am going to set fire to it before the machine gets there; that may help some. Once we get through it, we are over the worst. There's Indiantown, about two miles from here. Now, I figure that the motive for the attacks on us lies somewhere between the machine and Indiantown, for the strange white men never go beyond the trading-post, but, for the life of me, I can see nothing in this country that would supply the motive, can you?"