Kitabı oku: «The Road Builders», sayfa 6
As for Carhart, he was striding easily along, the hint of a smile playing about the corners of his mouth. “I think I understand the situation pretty well, Peet,” he said. “I was a little stirred up when my men began to go thirsty, but that’s all past, and I’m going to drop it. I guess we both understand that this construction is the most important thing Mr. De Reamer has on hand these days. And if we’re going to carry him through, we’ll have to pull together.”
They found Tiffany, coat thrown aside, hat tipped back, weeding his garden.
“Come in – glad to see you,” he said, only half concealing his curiosity over the spectacle of Carhart and Peet walking together in amity. “Didn’t succeed in getting back, eh, Carhart?”
“Not yet, Tiffany. I had to run up to Crockett.” He said this in an offhand manner, and he did not look at Peet; but he knew from the expression on Tiffany’s face that the superintendent was turning red again.
“You ain’t had supper, have you?” said Tiffany. “You’re just in time to eat with us.”
“Supper!” Carhart repeated the word in some surprise, then looked at his watch.
“You hadn’t forgotten it, had you?” Tiffany grinned.
“To tell the truth, I had. May we really eat with you? It will save us some time.”
“Can you? Well, I wonder! Come in.” And taking up his coat, Tiffany led the way into the house.
More than once during that meal did Tiffany’s eyes flit from Peet’s half-bewildered countenance to that of the quiet, good-natured Carhart. He asked no questions, but he wondered. Once he thought that Peet threw him an inquiring glance, but he could not be certain. After supper, as he reached for the toothpicks and pushed back his chair, he was tempted to come out with the question which was on his mind, “What in the devil are you up to, Carhart?” But what he really said was, “Help yourselves to the cigars, boys. They’re in that jar, there.”
And then, for a moment, both Peet and Tiffany sat back and watched Carhart while he lighted his cigar, turned it over thoughtfully, shook the match, and dropped it with a little sputter into his coffee cup. Then the man who was building the Red Hills extension got, with some deliberation, to his feet, and turned toward Tiffany. “Would it spoil your smoke to take it while we walk?” he asked.
“Not at all,” replied the host. “Where are we going?”
“To the yards.”
Peet, for no reason whatever, went red again; and Tiffany, tipped back in his chair and slowly puffing at his cigar, looked at him. Then he too got up, and the three men left the house together. And during all the walk out to the freight depot, Carhart talked about the new saddle-horse he had bought at Crockett.
The freight yard at Sherman extended nearly a mile, beginning with the siding by the depot and expanding farther on to the width of a dozen tracks. Carhart came to a halt at the point where the tangle of switches began, and looked about him. Everywhere he saw cars, some laden, some empty. A fussy little engine was coughing down the track, whistling angrily at a sow and her litter of spotted, muddy-yellow pigs which had been sleeping in a row between the rails. From the roundhouse, off to the left, arose the smoke of five or six resting locomotives. Nearer at hand, seated in a row on the handle of the turn-table, were as many black negroes, laughing and showing their teeth and eyeballs, and discussing with much gesticulation and some amiable heat the question of the day. Carhart’s sweeping glance took in the scene, then his interest centred on the cars.
Peet fidgeted. “There ain’t any of your cars here, Mr. Carhart,” he said uneasily.
Already Carhart knew better, but he was not here to squabble with Peet. “How many have you here all together?” he asked; and after a moment of rapid counting he answered his own question: “Something more than a hundred, eh?”
“Yes, but – ”
“Well, what?”
“Look here, Carhart, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but I can’t let you have any of these cars.”
“You can’t?”
“Not possibly. Half of ’em are foreign as it is. I’m so short now I don’t know what I’m going to do. Honest, I don’t.”
Carhart turned this answer over in his mind. After a moment he looked up, first at Peet, then at Tiffany, as if he had something to say; but whatever it may have been, he turned away without saying it.
“What is it, old man?” cried Tiffany, at last. “What can we do for you, anyway?”
Still Carhart did not speak. His eyes again sought the long lines of cars. Finally, resting one foot on a projecting cross-tie, he turned to the superintendent. “Suppose you do this, Peet,” he said, speaking slowly; “suppose you tell your yard-master that I am to be absolute boss here until midnight. Then you go home and leave me here. Tiffany could stay and help me out – this isn’t his department.”
This brought Peet close to the outer limit of bewilderment. “What in – ” he began; but Carhart, observing the effect of his request, interrupted.
“I don’t believe Mr. Peet understands the situation very well, Tiffany. Tell him where we stand – where Mr. De Reamer stands.” And with this he walked off a little way.
Tiffany came to the point. To Peet’s question, “What is he talking about, Tiffany?” the veteran replied: “He knows and I know, Lou, that the only thing that will save the old man is a track to Red Hills. I haven’t the slightest idea what Carhart’s up to, but I’ll tell you this, I’ve seen him in one or two tight places, and I never saw him look like this before. He’s got something he wants to do, and he’s decided that it’s necessary, and it ain’t for you and me to stand in his way. When you come to know Paul Carhart, you’ll learn that he don’t do things careless. What do you suppose the Old Man meant when he told you to back him up to the limit with cars and engines, and told me to keep out of his way?”
Peet did not reply for a moment. He took off his hat and brushed back the hair from a forehead that was moist with sweat. He looked from one man to the other, and from both to the roundhouse, and the depot, and the waiting cars. Finally he walked over toward Carhart. “Go ahead,” he said queerly, “I’ll stay with you.”
“Good enough.” And with these two words Carhart wheeled around and surveyed the nearest line of cars – box, flat, and gondola. “Most of those are empty, aren’t they?” he asked.
“About half of them. But here’s Dougherty, the yard-master. Dougherty, this is Mr. Carhart. You can take your orders from him to-night.”
Carhart extended his hand. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Dougherty. I’m afraid we’ll all have to make a night of it. I want you to keep steam up in three engines. And pick up all the men you can find and start them unloading every car in the yard. Keep ’em jumping. I want to have three empty trains at Paradise by midnight.”
“By mid – ” Dougherty’s mouth opened a very little, and his eyes, after taking in Paul Carhart’s face and figure, settled on the superintendent.
But Peet, with an expressive movement of his hands, turned away; and Tiffany, after a glance about the little group, went after him.
“Brace up, Lou,” said Tiffany, in a low voice; “brace up.”
Peet’s hands were deep in his pockets. His eyes were fixed on the rails before him. “Dump all that freight on the ground!” he moaned. “Look here, Tiffany, I suppose he knows what he’s doing, but – but what’ll the traffic men say!”
“Never you mind the traffic men.”
“But – dump all that freight out here on the ground!”
Tiffany passed an unsteady hand across his eyes. If Peet had looked at him, he would not have felt reassured; but he did not look up.
Dougherty, with a gulp, obeyed Carhart. And half an hour later the chance observers and the yard loafers were rubbing their eyes. Laborers were busy from one end of the yard to the other, throwing out boxes and bales and crates, and piling them haphazard between the tracks. The tired, wheezy switch engine, enveloped in a cloud of its own steam, was laboriously making up the first train. And moving quietly about, issuing orders and giving a hand here and there, followed by the disturbed eyes of the general superintendent and the chief engineer of the Shaky and Windy, Paul Carhart was bossing the work. Once he stepped over to the two men of the disturbed eyes, a thoughtful expression on his own face. “Say, Tiffany,” he asked, “how much business does the Paradise Southern do?”
Tiffany started, and looked keenly at Carhart. There was a faint glimmer in his eyes, but this was followed immediately by uncertainty. “None,” he replied; “that is, none to speak of. They run a combination car each way every day – two cars when business is brisk. The Old Man would have abandoned it years ago if it hadn’t been for the stock scheme I told you about.”
“Yes,” mused Carhart, “that’s what I understood. But if it’s such a mistake, why was it built in the first place?”
“Oh, they were going to run it through to Bonavita on the Emerald River, but the B. & G. got all there was of that business first, and so the P. S. never got beyond Total Wreck. Mr. De Reamer never built it. The old Shipleigh crowd did that before Mr. De Reamer bought up this property.” The faint glimmer had returned to Tiffany’s eyes; he was searching Carhart’s face. “You want these trains sent on through to your camp, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.
“No, they are to go down over the P. S.”
Tiffany’s expression was growing almost painful. Carhart went on. “There are sidings at Total Wreck, aren’t there, Peet?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, quite a yard there; but it’s badly run down.”
“What other sidings are there along the line?”
“Long ones at Yellow House and Dusty Bend.”
“How long?”
“Nearly two miles each.”
“How long is the line?”
“Forty-five miles.”
“Good Lord!” The exclamation was Tiffany’s. He was staring at Carhart with an expression of such mingled astonishment, incredulity, and expansive delight, that Peet’s curiosity broke its bounds. “For God’s sake, Tiffany,” he cried, “what is it? What’s he going to do?”
But Tiffany did not hear. He was gazing at Paul Carhart, saying incoherent things to him, and bringing down a heavy hand on his shoulder. He was somewhat frightened – never before, even in his own emphatic life, had his routine notions received such a wrench – but his eyes were shining. “Lord! Lord!” he was saying, “but there’ll be swearing in Sherman to-morrow.”
“The time has come when I ought to know what” – this from the purple Peet.
“Don’t ask him, Lou,” cried Tiffany, “don’t ask him. If we smash, it won’t be your fault. Ain’t that right, Paul?”
“Yes,” replied Carhart, “it is just right. Don’t ask any questions, Peet, and don’t give me away. I don’t want any swearing in Sherman to-morrow. I don’t want a whisper of this to get out for a week – not for a month if we can keep it under.”
Tiffany quieted down; grew thoughtful. “It will take a lot of men, Paul. How can you prevent a leak?”
“I’m going to take them all West with me afterward.”
“I see. That’s right – that’s right! And the station agents and train crews and switchmen – yes, I see. You’ll take ’em all.”
“Every man,” replied Carhart, quietly.
“If necessary, you’ll take ’em under guard.”
Carhart smiled a very little. “If necessary,” he replied.
“You’ll want some good men,” mused Tiffany. “I’ll tell you, – suppose you leave that part of it to me. It’s now, – let’s see, – seven-forty. It won’t be any use starting your first train until you’ve got the men to do the work. I’ll need a little time, but if you’ll give me an hour and half to two hours, say until nine-thirty, I’ll have your outfit ready. I’ll send some of my assistants along with you, and a bunch of our brakemen and switchmen. There’ll be the commissariat to look out for too, – you see to all that, Lou, will you?”
Peet inclined his head. “For how many men?” he asked.
“Oh, five hundred, anyway, before we get through with it.” Nothing could surprise the superintendent now. He merely nodded.
“And rifles,” Tiffany added. “You’ll want a case of ’em.”
“No,” said Carhart, “I shan’t need any rifles for the P. S., but I want five hundred more at the end of the track, and, say ten thousand rounds of ball cartridges. Will you see to that, Peet?”
The superintendent grunted out, “Who’s paying for all this?” and then as neither of the others took the trouble to reply, he subsided.
“All right, then,” said Tiffany. “I’ll have your crew here – enough for the first train, anyhow. You can trust to picking up fifty or a hundred laborers in the neighborhood of Paradise. See you later.” And with this, the chief engineer took his big person away at a rapid walk.
Carhart turned to Peet and extended his hand. Dusk was falling. The headlights of the locomotives threw their yellow beams up the yard. Switch lights were shining red and white, and lanterns, in the hands of shadowy figures, were bobbing here and there. There was a great racket about them of bumping cars and squeaking brakes, and of shouting and the blowing off of locomotives. “I don’t blame you for thinking that everything’s going to the devil, Peet,” said Carhart. “But I don’t believe they’ve let you in on the situation. If I’m running risks, it’s because we’ve got to run risks.”
Peet hesitated, then accepted the proffered hand. “I suppose it’s all right,” he replied. “Tiffany seems to agree with you, and he generally knows what he’s about. But – ” he paused. They were standing by a heap of merchandise. The heap was capped by a dozen crates of chickens which, awakened from their sleep, were fluttering about within their narrow coop and clucking angrily. He waved his hand. “Think of what this means to our business,” he said.
Carhart listened for a moment, then looked back to Peet. “If I were sure it would come to nothing worse than a slight disarrangement of your business, I’d sleep easy to-night.”
“It’s as bad as that, is it?”
“Yes,” Carhart replied, “it’s as bad as that. If I lose, no matter how the fight in the board turns out, you know what it will mean – no more De Reamer and Chambers men on the S. & W. Every De Reamer fireman and brakeman will go. It’ll be a long vacation for the bunch of you.”
Peet was silent. And then, standing there where he had so often and so heedlessly stood before, his sordid, moderately capable mind was torn unexpectedly loose from its well-worn grooves and thrown out to drift on a tossing sea of emotion and of romantic adventure. The breathlessness of the scene was borne in on his consciousness on a wave that almost took away his breath. Carhart was the sort of man whom he could not understand at all. He knew this now, or something near enough to it, clear down to the bottom of his subconscious self. And when he turned and looked at the thin man of the masterful hand, it was with a change of manner. “All right,” he said, “go ahead. Just say what you want me to do.”
At five minutes to ten that night a locomotive lay, the steam roaring in clouds through her safety valve, on the siding by the freight depot; and stretching off behind her was a long string of empties. Carhart, Tiffany, and Peet, walking up alongside the train, could distinguish, through the dark, men sitting on brake wheels, or swinging their legs out of box-car doors or standing in groups in the gondola cars. Once, during a brief lull in the noise of the yard, they heard a gentle snore which was issuing from the dark recesses of one of the box-cars. The three men halted beside the locomotive.
“You’d better go, Paul,” said Tiffany.
Carhart looked at Peet. “I’ll rely on you to keep things coming,” he said.
“Go ahead,” replied the superintendent. “I’ll have the three trains and all the men at Paradise before morning.”
“And we’ll look out for the commissariat too, Paul,” added Tiffany.
“All right,” said Carhart. “But there’s another thing, Peet. I haven’t cars enough yet. As soon as enough come in to make up another train, send it out to me.”
“That’ll be sometime to-morrow afternoon, likely,” Peet replied soberly.
Carhart nodded, shook hands with the two men, and mounted to the engine.
“Go ahead,” said Peet. “You’ve got a clear track.”
The whistle blew. Somewhere back in the night a speck of light swung up in a quarter circle. The engineer opened his throttle.
“Bong Voyage to the Paradise Unlimited!” said Tiffany.
Carhart was not surprised, when the third train rolled into Paradise on that following morning, to see Tiffany descending from the caboose. Between them they lost no time in completing the preparations for the journey down to Total Wreck. Of the two regular trains on the line, No. 3, southbound, was held at Paradise, and the lone passenger was carried down on Carhart’s train; the northbound train, No. 4, was stopped at Dusty Bend.
Then for a time a series of remarkable scenes took place along the right of way of the Paradise Southern. Men by the hundred, all seemingly bent on destruction, swarmed over the line and tore it to pieces. Trains ran north and west laden with rusty old rails, switches, ancient cross-ties of questionable durability, with everything, as Carhart had ordered, excepting the sand and clay ballast.
“Some poor devils lost their little fortunes in the old P. S.” said Tiffany, on the first morning, as the two engineers stood looking at the work of ruin. “I sort of hate to see it go.”
Carhart himself went West on the first train, leaving Tiffany to carry the work through. He was satisfied that everything would from now on work smoothly at Paradise and Sherman, and he knew that not a man of those on the work would slip through Tiffany’s fingers to bear tales back to civilization of the wild doings on the frontier. At Sherman they said that owing to insufficient business the P. S. trains would be discontinued for a time, and no one was surprised at the news. Far off in New York, in the Broad Street office of Daniel De Reamer, it was some time before they knew anything about it. The little world was rolling on. Men were clasping hands, buying and selling, knifing and shooting. Durfee’s plans were marching forward, as his plans had a way of doing. De Reamer’s mind was coiling and uncoiling in its subterranean depths. General Carrington was talking about a hunting trip into the mountains with pack-animals and good company and many, many bottles.
Yes, the world was rolling on about as usual; but the Paradise Southern was no more. Forty-five miles of grade, trampled, tie-marked; a few dismantled sheds which had once been known as stations; a lonely row of telegraph poles stretching from one bleak horizon to another; a rickety roundhouse or two: this was all that was left of a railroad: this, and a long memory of disaster, and an excited ranchman at Total Wreck who was telegraphing hotly to his lawyer.
CHAPTER VII
THE SPIRIT OF THE JOB
In order to make plain what was taking place at the main camp during Carhart’s absence, we must go back to that evening during which so many things had come up to be disposed of before the chief could leave for Sherman and Crockett and Paradise. To begin with, Dimond came riding in at dusk with a canteen of clear water which he laid on the table about which the engineers were sitting. To Carhart, when he had unscrewed the cap and taken a deep draught, it tasted like Apollinaris. “First rate!” he exclaimed; “first rate!” Then he passed it to Old Van, who smacked his lips over it.
“Where did he find this?” Carhart asked.
“Eighteen or twenty miles ahead.”
“Plenty of it?”
“He thinks so,” he says, “but he’s gone on to find more.”
“Are the Apaches bothering him?”
“We’ve had a pop at ’em now and then. He says he hopes to have some beadwork for you when he sees you again. There was one fellow came too near one night, and Mr. Scribner hit him, but the others carried him off before we could get the beads. He sent me back to guide the wagons to the well if you want to send ’em.”
“Well,” said Carhart, when Dimond had gone, “we have water now, anyway. The next question is about these thieves. You say that five animals were stolen while I was away. When the first roads went through, they had regular troops to guard the work, and I don’t know that we can improve on the plan. I’ll look the matter up when I get to Sherman.”
But an hour later, when he left his division engineer and stepped outside for a last look at “Texas,” he found Charlie hanging about near the stable tent. The cook approached him, and made it awkwardly but firmly plain that he had heard a rumor to the effect that Mr. Carhart was going to Sherman for regular troops, and that, if the rumor were true, he, Charlie, would leave.
No questions were necessary, for Carhart had never thought Jack Flagg the only deserter in camp. He mused a moment; then he looked up thoughtfully at the tall, loose-jointed, but well-set-up figure of the cook. “Do you know anything about military drill and sentry duties?” he asked abruptly.
Charlie, taken aback, hesitated.
“Never mind answering. We’ll say that you do. Now, if I were to put you in charge of the business, give you all the men and rifles you need, could you guarantee to guard this camp?”
Charlie’s face wore a curious mixture of expressions.
“Well, speak up.”
“I rather guess I could.”
“I can depend on you, can I?”
“You won’t get the regulars, then?”
“No, I won’t get them.”
“Then you can depend on me.”
“I want you to get about it this morning. Mr. Gus Vandervelt will give you everything you need. Make the watches short and distribute them among a good many of the men, so that nobody will be worked too hard.”
Carhart passed on, and let himself into the covered enclosure where his horse lay sick. It was a quarter of an hour before he returned to the headquarters tent, to find Vandervelt standing in silence at the table. Apparently he had risen to leave, and had paused at the sound of a step outside. Standing for a moment at the tent entrance, Carhart’s eyes took on the curious expression which the sight of the elder of the oddly assorted brothers frequently aroused there. The lamplight threw upward shadows on Old Van’s face and deepened the gloom about his eyes. A moment and Carhart, sobering, stepped inside. Certain memories of Old Van’s strange career came floating through his thoughts. It was probably the last time they would be thrown together. Considering everything, he would not again feel like choosing him for an assistant. Yet he admired Old Van’s strong qualities, and – he was sorry, very sorry.
“Van,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind about the troops. I’ve told Charlie, the cook, to organize an effective system of guards at night, and I’ve told him, too, that he will take his orders from Gus.”
Vandervelt stood motionless, looking at this man who had risen to be his chief, and his color slowly turned from bronze to red.
“From Gus, eh?” he said with a slight huskiness.
“Yes,” replied Carhart, steadily, “from Gus. He will represent me while I am gone. It will be only a day or so before he’ll be around.”
Old Van might have answered roughly; instead he dropped his eyes. But Carhart’s unpleasant duty was not yet done.
“One thing more, Van,” he said, looking quietly at the older man, but unable to conceal a certain tension in his speech, “are you carrying a gun?”
There was a long silence. Every one of the faint evening camp sounds fell loud on their ears. A puff of wind shook the tent flaps and stirred the papers on the table. The lamp flickered. Very slowly, without looking up, Old Van reached back to his hip pocket, drew out a revolver, laid it on the table, – laid it, oddly enough, on a copy of the Book of Common Prayer which was acting as a paperweight, and left the tent and went off down the grade. And for some time after his footfalls had died away Carhart sat with elbows on table, chin on hands, looking at the weapon.
Paul Carhart was gone. It would probably be a week to ten days before he would be able to get back to the track-end. And with him had gone the spirit of the work, the vitality and dash which had worked out at moments through the assistants and the men in a stirring sense of achievement, which had given to each young engineer and engineer’s assistant a touch of the glow of creating something, which had made this ugly scene almost beautiful. That steam-leaking locomotive and that rattle-trap of a “private car,” bearing the chief away into the dawn, left a sense of depression behind it. By noon of the following day, Old Van was growing noticeably morose. By mid-afternoon every man of the thousand felt the difference. Before supper time the heat, the gloom, the loneliness of the desert, the sense of a dead pull on the work, the queer thought that there was no such place as Red Hills anywhere on the map, and that even if there were, the western extension of the Shaky and Windy would never reach it, these thoughts were preying on them, particularly on Young Van, who was up and at work soon after noon.
Through the second day it was worse. Young Van made stout efforts to throw more energy into his work, and then, in looking back on these efforts, recognized in them a confession of weakness. Paul Carhart never seemed to drive as he had been driving, – his work was always the same. In this frame of mind the young man, at evening, mounted a hummock to survey what had been accomplished during the day. But to his altered eyes the track was no longer a link in the world’s girdle; it was only a thin line of dirt and wood and steel, on which a thousand dispirited men had been toiling.
Later he saw Charlie bringing the wagons into corral. He heard his brother ordering the cook sharply about, and he noted how doggedly the orders were obeyed. Then, finally, having laid out the details of the morrow’s work and smoked an unresponsive cigarette or two, he went to sleep.
Old Van sat up later. And Charlie sat up later still, nearly all night in fact. He found a comfortable lounging place near Dimond’s post, in the shadow of the empty train. The grade was here slightly elevated, and, lying on one elbow, he could survey the camp. Now and then he made the rounds, looking after the half-dozen sentries whom he had posted on knolls outside the wide circle of tents and wagons, making sure that there was no drinking and that his men were advised as to their duties and responsibilities. Between trips he lay back, surrounded by a number of wide-awake laborers, and listened while Dimond recited the prowess of their chief. It was very comfortable there, stretched out upon the newly turned earth. The camp was very quiet. Only a few lights twinkled here and there, and it was not very late when these went out, one by one.
“I heard Mr. Scribner telling, the other day,” said Dimond, “how the boss run up against a farmer with a shotgun when he was running the line for the M. T. S. Mr. Scribner was a boy then, carrying stakes for him. There was quite a bunch of ’em, but nobody had a gun. They come out of a piece of woods on to the road, and there they see the farmer standing just inside his stump fence with the two barrels of his shotgun resting on the top of one of the stumps. Mr. Scribner says the old fellow was that excited he hollered so they could ‘a’ heard ’im half a mile off. ‘Don’t you dare cross the line of my property!’ he yells. ‘The first man that crosses the line of my property’s a dead man!’ They all stopped, Mr. Scribner says, for they didn’t any of ’em feel particularly like taking in a barrel or so of buckshot. But Mr. Carhart wasn’t ever very easy to stop. He just looked at the fellow a minute, and then he went right for him. ‘Look out!’ the man yells. ‘You cross the line of my property and you’re a dead man!’ But Mr. Carhart went right on over the fence. ‘That’s all right,’ says he, ‘but you can’t get away with more’n one or two of us, and there’ll be enough left to hang you up to that tree over there.’ And the next thing they knew, Mr. Scribner says, Mr. Carhart had took the shotgun right out of the farmer’s hands.”
Dimond had other stories. “I guess there ain’t nobody ever found it easy to get around him. Once when he was a kid surveyor, before he went North, they sent him over into southern Texas to look up an old piece of property. There was a fellow claimed a lot of land that really run over on to this property. Mr. Carhart figured it out that the fellow was lying, but he knew it was going to be hard to prove it. The old marks of the corners were all gone – there wasn’t a soul living who had ever seen ’em. It was an old Spanish grant, Mr. Scribner says, and the Spanish surveyors had just blazed trees to mark the lines. Well, sir, would you believe it, Mr. Carhart worked out the place where this corner ought ‘o be, cut down an old cedar tree that stood there, sawed it up into lengths before witnesses, found the blaze mark all grown over with bark, and took the piece of log right into court and proved it. No, I guess it wouldn’t be so infernal easy to get ahead o’ Mr. Carhart.”
“That’s all right,” observed one of the laborers, “if you’re working for Mr. Carhart. But s’pose you ain’t – s’pose you’re workin’ for Mr. Vandervelt?”
“Oh, well, of course,” Dimond replied, “Mr. Vandervelt’s different. He ain’t nowhere near the man Mr. Carhart is.”
Charlie took in this comment quietly, but with less than the usual good nature in his blue eyes.
“I don’t care how decent the boss is,” continued the laborer, “if I have to have a mean old he-devil cussin’ at me from six to six, and half the night besides, sometimes.”
Dimond grew reflective. “I know about Mr. Vandervelt,” he said meditatively. “You see, boys, it was sort o’ lonely up ahead there boring for water, and Mr. Scribner and me we got pretty well acquainted.” Dimond was endeavoring to conceal the slight superiority over these men of which he could not but be conscious. “It’s a queer case,” he went on, “Mr. Vandervelt’s case. I know about it. It’s his temper, you see. That’s what’s kep’ ’im back, – that’s why he’s only a division engineer to-day.”
“Keep quiet, boys,” broke in the laborer, with a sneer. “Dimond knows about it. He’s tellin’ us the news. Mr. Vandervelt’s got a temper, he says.”
