"My belief, Farnsworth, is that the railroad people might dig up the whole of New Mexico, transport the dirt here and dump it on top of that quicksand, and still the quicksand would settle lower and lower and the tracks would still break up and disappear.

There's no bottom to that quicksand." "Of course you ought to know all about it, Duff," Clarence made haste to answer.

"You've lived here for years, and you know all about this section of the country." That didn't quite suit the gambler.

What he sought to do was to raise an argument with the young man--who still had some money left.
"What makes you think, Farnsworth, that the railroad can win out with the desert and lay tracks across the quicksand?
That's a bad quicksand, you know.

It has been called the 'Man-killer.' Many a prospector or cow-puncher has lost his life in trying to get over that sand." "The real Man-killer quicksand is a mile to the south of where the tracks go, isn't it ?" asked Farnsworth.
"Yes; and the first party of railway surveyors who went over the line for their track thought they had dodged the Man-killer.