"The Breckenridge Engineering Company. office of the vice-president.Roderick Hallowell, Esq.c/o Contract Camp, Grafton, Illinois.Sir:Your report received. Consider yourself and Burford as jointly in command till further orders. I shall reach camp on route inspection by 26th inst. Kindly report conditions daily by wire.Breckenridge."
"The Breckenridge Engineering Company. office of the vice-president.
Roderick Hallowell, Esq.
c/o Contract Camp, Grafton, Illinois.
Sir:Your report received. Consider yourself and Burford as jointly in command till further orders. I shall reach camp on route inspection by 26th inst. Kindly report conditions daily by wire.
Breckenridge."
"So we're made jointly responsible. Put in charge by Breckenridge. By Breck the Great, his very self. H'm-m." Burford looked out at the crowded boats, the muddy, half-built levee, stretching far as eye could see; the night shift of laborers, eighty strong, shuffling aboard the quarter-boat for their hot supper; the massed, powerful machinery, stretching its black funnels and cranes against the red evening sky. "So we're the two Grand Panjandrums on this job. Responsible for excavation that means prosperity or ruin for half the farmers in the district, according as we do or don't finish those laterals before the June rise; responsible for a pay-roll that runs over four hundred dollars a day; responsiblefor a time-lock contract that will cost our company five hundred dollars forfeit money a day for every day that we run over our time limit. Well, Hallowell?"
"It strikes me," said Rod, very briefly, "that it's up to us."
"Yes, it is up to us. But if we don't make good——"
"Don't let that worry you." Rod's jaw set, steel. "Don't give that a thought. We'll make good."
"Hello, Sis!" It was Roderick's voice over the telephone. "How are you feeling this fine, muggy morning?"
"Pretty well, I suppose. How are you, Rod? Where are you telephoning from?"
"From Burford's shack. We're in a pinch down here, Marian. We need you to help out. Can't you ask Mr. Gates to hitch up and bring you down to camp right away? Or if you'll walk down to Gates's Landing I'll send Mulcahy with the launch, to bring you the rest of the way. And put on your very best toggery, Sis. War paint and feathers and all that. That pretty lavender silk rig will do. But don't forget the gimcracks. Put on all the jewelry you own."
"Why, Roderick Hallowell! What can you mean? Dress up in my best, and come down tocamp at nine in the morning, and on Sunday morning at that?"
"I mean just what I say." Then Roderick chuckled irresistibly. "Poor Sis, I don't wonder you're puzzled. But Sunday is the contract's day at home, and we want you to stand in line and receive; or pour tea, whichever you prefer to do. Do you see?"
"No, I don't see. All I do see is that you're talking nonsense. And I don't intend to come down to the camp. It is such a hot, horrid morning, I don't propose to stir. I want you to come up and spend the day here instead. Mrs. Gates wants you, too, she says, for dinner and for supper as well. And yesterday the rural-delivery man brought a whole armful of new magazines. We'll sit on the porch, and you can read and I'll write letters, and we'll have a lovely, quiet day together."
There was a pause. When Roderick spoke again, his voice was rather quenched.
"Sorry, Sis, but it isn't possible for me to come, even for dinner. I'll be hard at it here, every minute of the day."
"You mean that you must work on the contract all day Sunday? When you have worked fourteen hours a day, ever since you came West?" Marian's voice was very tart. "Can't you stop long enough to go to church with me, even? There's a beautiful little church four miles away. It's just a pleasant drive. Surely you can give up two hours of the morning, if you can spare no more time!"
"It isn't a question of what I'm willing to do. And I am not planning to work on Sunday. As you know, Sis, we bank our fires Saturday night and give the laborers a day off. Nearly all the men left for town last night to stay till Monday. But listen. Burford tells me that, on every clear Sunday, we can expect a visit from most of the land-owners for miles around. And not just from the land-owners themselves: their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts; and the children, and the neighbors, and the family cat. They want to see for themselves just how the work is going on. When you stop to think, it's their own work. Their money is paying for every shovelful of dirt we move, and every inch of levee-work. Andthey're paying every copper of our salaries, too. They have a right to see how their own investment is being used, Sis."
"So you have to treat these country people as honored guests! Cart them up and down the canal, and show them the excavations, and let them pry into your reports, and ask you silly questions! Of all the tiresome, preposterous things!"
"That's pretty much what we'll do. But there is nothing preposterous about it; it's their right. And we fellows want to do the decent thing. Now, more than ever, we want to do everything properly because Carlisle is sick and away. Burford says that Carlisle was more exacting about these visits of inspection than about anything else on the plant. He said that when a man builds a house to protect his family he has the right to oversee every inch of the construction, if he likes. On the same principle, these farmers who are digging canals and putting up levees to protect their lands should have the right to watch the work, step by step. Burford says, too, that Carlisle, with his everlasting patience and courtesy, was steadily winningover the whole district; even the men who had fought the first assessments tooth and nail. It is the least we boys can do to keep up the good feeling that Carlisle has established."
"Well, I think it is all very absurd. Why should I come down to the work? These people do not even know that I exist. And if you really need somebody to talk to their wives and be gracious and all that, why can't Mrs. Burford do it better than I? She is right on the ground, anyway."
"Yes, she's right on the ground. And so is Thomas Tucker's newest tooth. The poor little skeezicks howled half the night, Burford says. He has stopped yelling just now, but he won't let his mother out of his sight for one minute. Mrs. Burford is pretty much worn to a frazzle. But I don't want to pester you, Marian." There was a worried note in Rod's voice now. "I wouldn't have you come for any consideration, if it were to make you ill or tired. So perhaps we'd better not think of it."
Marian shrugged her shoulders. An odd, teasing question stirred in her mind.
"I rather think I can stand the day if you can. Finnegan and I will be at the landing in half an hour. I, and my best beads and wampum, and my new spring hat. There, now!"
Not waiting for Rod's delighted reply, she hurried away to dress. A whimsical impulse led her to put on her freshest and daintiest gown, a charming lilac silk, with a wide, tilting picture hat, heaped with white and purple lilacs. She was standing at the little pier, tugging at her long gloves, when the duty-launch, with Rod himself at the wheel, shot round the bend. Rod waved his hand; then, at sight of her amazing finery, he burst into a whoop of satisfaction.
"Will you look at that! Marian Hallowell, you're the best ever. I might have known you'd play up. Though I was scared stiff, for fear you'd think that just every-day clothes would do. My, but you're stunning! You're looking stronger, too, Sis. You're not nearly so wan and spooky as you were a week ago."
"I'm feeling better, too." Marian's color rose. Even her sulky humor must melt under Rod's beaming approval. "Now give me my sailingorders, Rod. How many callers will we have? What sort of people will they be? Tart and grim, like Mrs. Chrisenberry, I suppose, or else kindly and bashful and 'woodsy,' like the Gateses? Will they stop by on their way home from church, or will they come promptly after dinner and spend the afternoon?"
Rod laughed. "No telling, Sister. We may have ten callers, we may have a hundred. You'll find all kinds of people among them; precisely as you'll find all kinds of people on Mount Vernon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. There'll be nice, neighborly folks who'll drive up the canal road in Bond Street motoring clothes and sixty-horse-power cars. There'll be other nice, neighborly folks who'll ride in through the woods on their plough horses, wearing slat sunbonnets and hickory shirts. And they'll be friendly, and critical, and enthusiastic, and dubersome, all in a heap. You'll need all your social experience, and all your tact, and all the diplomacy you can muster. See?"
"Yes, I'm beginning to see." Marian's eyes were thoughtful. Then she sprang up to waveher lilac parasol in greeting to the martin-box and Sally Lou.
"Isn't this the most mournful luck that ever was!" Sally Lou sat with Thomas Tucker, a forlorn little figure, planted firmly on her knee. "To think that my son must spend his first afternoon of the season in cutting a wicked double tooth! Maybe it'll come through by dinner-time, though. Then he'll go to sleep, and I can slip over and help you entertain our people—Why, Marian Hallowell! Oh, what a lovely, lovely gown! You wise child, how did you know that to wear it to-day was precisely the wisest thing that you could possibly do!"
"I didn't know that. I just put it on. Partly for fun, and—well, partly to provoke Rod, I suppose." Marian felt rather foolish. But she had no time for further confidences.
Up the muddy canal road came a roomy family carriage, drawn by a superbly matched black team. That carriage was packed solid to the dashboard. Father, two tall boys, and a rosy little daughter crammed the front seat; mother, grandmother, and aunty were fitted neatly intothe back; and a fringe of small fry swung from every direction.
"Morning." The father reined in and gave everybody a friendly nod and smile. "How are you, Mr. Burford? Glad to meet you, Mr. Hallowell. No, thank you, we're on our way to Sunday-school and church, so we haven't a minute to stop. But I have been wanting to know how you think lateral four will work out; the one that turns down past my farm. Will that sand cut give you much trouble?"
"It will make slower dredging, Mr. Moore. But we'll put it through as fast as we can."
"Um. I'm in no hurry to see it go through. The high water isn't due for a month, anyway. Now, I don't know much about sand-cutting. But I've been told that your worst trouble in a sand streak is with the slides. After your dredge-dipper has dumped the stuff ashore, it won't stay put. It keeps tobogganing back into the channel and blocking your cut. So sometimes you have to hoist it out two or three times over."
"That's exactly the case, Mr. Moore. Usually our levee gangs follow along and tamp the sanddown, or else spread it back from the berm where it has no chance to slide. But it is getting so near the time set for the completion of our upper lateral cut that we are obliged to keep our levee shift at work on the upper laterals and take our chances on the sand staying where we pile it."
"Just what I'd supposed. Now, I shall need a lot of that sand, in a week or so, for some cement work. S'pose I send you a couple of teams and half a dozen hands to-morrow, to cart off the sand under your direction. Would that help things along?"
"Help things along? I should say it would!" Rod beamed. "It would be the most timely help we could ask."
"But won't it put you to a lot of trouble, sir," asked Burford, "to take the hands off their regular farm-work in that way?"
"W-well, no. Anyway they can haul sand for a day or so without making much difference. And it will be a heap handier for you boys to have the stuff carted off as fast as you throw it ashore."
"It surely will. That's the best news we've heard in one while!" The boys stood smilingat each other, completely radiant. Mr. Moore nodded and turned his horses.
"Glad if it will be any accommodation. Well, good day to you all. My good wishes to Mr. Carlisle. Tell him I said he left a couple of mighty competent substitutes, but that his neighbors will be glad to see him coming back, just the same."
The big carriage with its gay load rolled away.
"So Moore will send men and teams to help us on that sand cut!" Burford, fairly chortling with satisfaction, started toward the martin-box. "If all our land-owners treated us with half the consideration that he always gives, our work would be a summer's dream. I'm going up to tell Sally Lou."
He had hardly reached the martin-box before he turned with a shout.
"There come our next visitors, Hallowell. The commodore and Mrs. McCloskey, in that fat little white launch. See?"
Commodore McCloskey it was, indeed. Finnegan's wild yelp of delighted greeting would have told as much. Marian promptly joined the hilarious race to the pier. The commodore, crisp andblinding-white in his starchy duck, stood at his launch wheel, majestic as if he stood on the bridge of an ocean liner. But Mrs. McCloskey, a dainty, soft-eyed, little old lady, with cheeks like Scotch roses, and silky curls white as dandelion down blowing from under her decorous gray bonnet, won Marian's heart at the first glance. She was as quaint and gentle and charming as an old-time miniature.
While the boys took the commodore up and down the laterals that he might see their progress since his last visit, Mrs. McCloskey trailed her soft old black silk skirts to the martin-box door and begged for a glimpse of the baby.
"He's crosser than a prickly little porcupine," protested Sally Lou, handing him over reluctantly.
"Oh, but he'll come to me just the minute! Won't you, lamb?"
And like a lamb Thomas Tucker forgot his sorrows and snuggled happily into her tender arms, while his relieved mother bustled about and helped Marian to make a generous supply of lemonade; for half a dozen carriage loads of visitors were now coming up the road.
"'Tis amazin'. Where do they all come from?" observed Mrs. McCloskey. "Yet there's nigh three hundred land-owners in this district. And the commodore, he passed the word yesterday that there's close on two hundred thousand acres of land that will be protected by this one drainage contract. Think of that, Miss Marian. Is it not grand to know that your brother is giving the power of his hands and his brains to such a big, helping work as all that?"
"Why, I suppose so." Marian spoke absently.
"And ye will be a help to him, too, I can see that." Mrs. McCloskey put out a hesitating little hand in a quaint old silken mitt and patted Marian's fluffy gown. "'Tis not everybody makes as bould as meself to tell you in so many words of your pretty finery. But sure 'tis everybody that will appreciate it, an' be pleased an' honored with the compliment of it."
Marian looked utterly puzzled.
"You think that I can be a help to Rod? Why, I don't know the least thing about his work. I really don't understand——"
"Well, aren't you a magic-maker, Auntie McCloskey!"Sally Lou put down the lemon-squeezer and stared. "Look at that precious baby! Sound asleep in your lap! While I haven't been able to pacify him for one minute, though I walked and sang all night!"
"'Tis the cruel tooth has come through, I'm thinkin'." Mrs. McCloskey laid the peaceful little porcupine tenderly into his crib. "Now, I'll stay and watch him while you two go and meet your guests. I'll call you the minute he chirps."
The two girls hurried to greet their callers, to offer them chairs on the shady side of the quarter-boat, to serve them with iced tea and lemonade. Much to Marian's surprise, she found herself chattering away vigorously and actually enjoying it all. As Rod had said, the slow stream that came and went all day included all sorts and conditions of folk. There were the gracious old clergyman and his sweet, motherly wife, who stopped for a pleasant half-hour, then jogged on across the country to his "afternoon meeting," twelve miles out in the lowlands. There were the two brisk young plutocrats from the great Kensington stock farmup-river, who flashed up in a stunning satiny-gray French car, for a brief exchange of courtesies. There were two of the district commissioners, quiet, keen-eyed gentlemen. One of these men, Rod told his sister later, was doing valuable service to the community by his experiments in improving the yield of corn throughout the district. The other commissioner was a lawyer of national reputation. Mrs. Chrisenberry stopped by, too: a brusque little visitor, sitting very stiff and fine in her cushioned phaeton, her beady eyes darting questions through her shrewd spectacles. Marian, feeling very real gratitude, devoted herself to Mrs. Chrisenberry. That lady, however, hardly spoke till just as she was starting to go. Then she leaned forward in her carriage. She fixed Marian with a gimlet eye.
"It's agreeable to see that you think we district folksisfolks," she said, very tartly indeed. "I'd some mistrusted the other day, but I guess now that you know what's what. Good-afternoon, all."
"Well, Sally Lou! Will you tell me what she meant?"
Sally Lou nodded wisely.
"Your pretty dress, I suspect. Didn't you hear Mrs. McCloskey praise it, too?"
"Oh!" And now Marian's face was very thoughtful indeed.
Late in the afternoon came the one disagreeable episode of the day.
The drainage district, upon which Roderick and Burford were employed, had become part of a huge league known as the Central Mississippi Drainage Association. This league had recently been organized. Its object was the cutting of protective ditches on a gigantic scale, and its annual expenditures for this work would run well past the million mark. Naturally there was strong competition between all the great engineering firms to win a favorable standing in the eyes of this new and powerful corporation. The Breckenridge Company, because of its superior record, was easily in the lead. None the less, as Rod had remarked a day or so before, it was up to every member of the Breckenridge Company, from Breck the Great down to the meekest cub engineer, to keep that lead.
Burford jeered mildly at Rod for taking his own small importance to the company so seriously.
"Just you wait and see," retorted Roderick.
"Oh, I'll wait, all right," laughed Burford. To-day, however, he was destined to see; and to see almost too clearly for his own peace of mind.
A sumptuous limousine car whirled up the muddy road. Its lordly door swung open; down stepped a large, autocratic gentleman, in raiment of startling splendor, followed by a quiet, courteous elderly man.
"I am Mr. Ellingworth Locke, of New York. I am the acting president of the Central Mississippi Drainage Association," announced the magnificent one. "You gentlemen, I take it, are the—ah—the junior engineers left in charge by Mr. Carlisle?"
Roderick and Burford admitted their identity.
"This is Mr. Crosby, our consulting engineer. Now that this district has joined the association, it comes under our direct surveillance. Mr. Crosby and I desire to go over your laterals and get an idea of your work thus far."
"We are honored." Burford bowed low and welcomed his guests with somewhat flamboyant courtesy. He led the way to the duty-launch. Roderick followed, bringing the cushions and the tarpaulin which the quick-witted Sally Lou hastily commanded him to carry aboard for the potentate's comfort.
Of all their guests, that long day, the acting president was the sole critic. At every rod of the big ditch, at every turn of the laterals, he found some petty fault. The consulting engineer, Mr. Crosby, followed him about in embarrassed silence. He was obviously annoyed by his employer's rudeness. However, for all Mr. Locke's strictures, it was evident that he could find no serious fault with the work. Yet both boys were tingling with vexation and chagrin when the regal limousine rolled away at last.
"What does ail his highness? Did ever you see such a beautiful grouch?" Rod mopped his forehead and stared belligerently after the car.
"Nothing ails him but a badly swelled head." Burford's jaw set hard. "The fact of it is, that the worshipful Mr. Ellingworth Locke hasn't twopins' worth of practical knowledge of dredging. He is a New York banker, and he has no understanding of conditions west of the Hudson. His bank is to make the loans for the association's drainage, and he has bought a big tract of land in this district. That is why he was elected acting president. Do you see?"
"Yes, that helps to explain things."
"So he struts around and tries to pick flaws with the most trifling points of our construction, to keep us from guessing how little he really knows about the big underlying principles. Gentle innocent, he tries to think he's an expert!" Burford waved a disrespectful muddy paw after the flying car. "All that an acting president is good for, anyway, is to wear white spats and to put on side."
"Well, that engineer knows his job."
"Crosby? Yes, he's an engineer all right. And a gentleman, too. Just the same, I'm glad we kowtowed to Mr. Locke. His opinion is so influential that his approval may mean a tremendous advantage to the Breckenridge Company some day."
"I'm hoping that Breckenridge himself will come before long and give us a looking over."
"I'm hoping for that myself. Half an hour of Breck will swing everything into shape. You want to know Breckenridge if ever you get the chance, Hallowell. He's the grandest ever. Just to watch him tramp up and down a ditch, great big silent figure that he is, and hear him fire off those cool, close-mouthed questions of his at you, brings you bristling up like a fighting-cock. He's a regular inspiration, I call him."
"I'm banking on the chance that I shall know him some day." Rod's eyes lighted. He remembered the words of his old professor, "To work under Breckenridge is not only an advantage to any engineer. It is an education in itself."
It was nearly six o'clock when their last callers arrived. They were not an interesting carriage load: a gaunt, silent, middle-aged man; a sallow-cheeked young woman, in cheap, showy clothes, her rough hands glittering with gaudy rings; and a six-year-old girl—a pitiful little ghost of a girl—who looked like a frail little shadow against Sally Lou's lusty, rosy two-year-old son. Her warped,tiny body in its forlorn lace-trimmed pink silk dress was braced in pillows in her mother's arms. Her dim black eyes stared listlessly with the indifference of long suffering.
Marian was always shaken and repelled by the sight of pain. But by this time Thomas Tucker was awake and loudly demanding his mother; so Marian must do her shrinking best, to make the new-comers feel themselves welcomed.
"No, Mamie she don't drink lemonade. No, she don't want no milk, neither. We'll just set here in the cool and rest a while till pappy gets through lookin' around." The young, tired mother sat down on the little pier. She settled the wan little creature carefully into her arms again. "No, there's nothing you can get for her; nothing at all."
"Doesn't she like to look at pictures? I have some new magazines," ventured Marian.
"She does like pictures once in a while. Want to see what the lady's got for you, Mamie?"
Mamie roused herself and looked silently at the books that Marian piled before her. Bent on pleasing the little wraith, Marian cut out severallovely ladies, and on a sudden inspiration added rosy cheeks from Rod's tray of colored pencils.
Those red and blue and purple pencils caught Mamie's listless eye. She even bestirred herself to try and draw a portrait or so with her own shaky little fingers.
"Beats all," sighed her mother. A little pleased color rose in her cheeks. "I haven't seen her take such an interest for months. Not even in her dollies. We buy her all the playthings we can think of. Her pappy, he don't ever go to town without he up and brings her a whole grist of candy and toys and clutter. But we never once thought of the pencils for her. Nor of paper dolls, either. My, I'm glad we stopped by. And her pappy, he'll be more pleased than words can tell. He's always so heart-set for Mamie to have a little fun."
"She must take these pencils home with her. Rod has a whole boxful." Marian tied up not only the pencils, but a generous roll of Rod's heavy drawing-paper, expressly adapted to making paper dolls that would stand alone. The child clutched the bundle in her little lean hands without a wordof thanks. But her white little face was eloquent. So was her father's face when he came to carry her away, and heard her mother's story of the new pleasure.
"Well, this day has meant hard work all right, even though it was a day of rest from my regular work," said Roderick. He was swinging the launch up the canal to the Gates's Landing. "It's a queer way to spend Sunday, isn't it, Sis? But it seems to be the only way for me just at present. And you can be sure that we're obliged to you, old lady, for the way that you've held up your end."
"I didn't mind the day, nor did I mind meeting all those people nearly as much as I'd imagined that I would," pondered Marian. "Especially the McCloskeys, the dear things! And that poor little crippled child, too. I wish I could do something more for her. Y-yes, as you say, it was pretty hard work. I'm rather tired to-night. But the day was well worth while."
But just how worth while that day had been, neither Rod nor Marian could know.
"Ready for breakfast, Miss Hallowell?" Mrs. Gates's pleasant voice summoned her.
"Just a minute." Marian loitered at the window, looking out at the transformed woods and fields. She could hardly believe her eyes. Two weeks ago only stark, leafless branches and muddy gray earth had stretched before her. But in these fourteen days, the magic of early April had wrought wonders. The trees stood clothed in shining new leaves, thick and luxuriant as a New England June. The fields were sheets of living green.
"It doesn't seem real," she sighed happily. "It isn't the same country that it was when I first came."
"No more are you the same girl." Mrs. Gates nodded approvingly behind the tall steamingcoffee-pot. "My, you were that peaky and piney! But nowadays you're getting some real red in your cheeks, and you eat more like a human being and less like a canary-bird."
Marian twinkled.
"Your brother is gettin' to be the peaky one, nowadays," went on Mrs. Gates, with her placid frankness. "Seems to me I never saw a boy look as beat out as he does, ever since that big cave-in on the canal last week. I'm thankful for this good weather for him. Maybe he can make up for the time they lost digging out the cave-in if it stays clear and the creeks don't rise any higher. He's a real worker, isn't he? Seems like he'd slave the flesh off his bones before he'd let his job fall behind. But I don't like to see him look so gaunt and tired. It isn't natural in a boy like him."
Marian looked puzzled.
"Why, Rod is always strong and well."
"He's strong, yes. But even strong folks can tire out. Flesh and blood aren't steel and wire. You'd better watch him pretty sharp, now that hot weather is coming. He needs it."
Marian pushed back her plate with a frown. Her dainty breakfast had suddenly lost its savor.
"Watch over Rod! I should think it was Rod's place to watch over me, instead. And when I have been so ill, too!" she said to herself.
Yet a queer little thorn of anxiety pricked her. She called Mr. Finnegan and raced with him down through the wet green woods to the canal. Roderick stood on the dredge platform, talking to the head dredge-runner. He hailed Marian with a shout.
"You're just in time to see me off, Sis. I'm going to Saint Louis to hurry up our coal shipment."
"The coal shipment? I thought a barge-load of coal was due here yesterday."
"Due, yes. But it hasn't turned up, and we're on our last car-load this minute. That's serious. We'll have to shut down if I can't hurry a supply to camp within thirty-six hours."
Marian followed him aboard the engineers' house-boat and watched him pack his suit-case.
"Why are you taking all those time-books, Rod? Surely you will not have time to make up yourweek's reports during that three-hour trip on the train?"
"These aren't my weekly reports. These are tabulated operating expenses. President Sturdevant, the head of our company, has just announced that he wants us to furnish data for every working day. He's a bit of a martinet, you know. He wants everything figured up into shape for immediate reference. He says he proposes to follow the cost of this job, excavation, fill, everything, within thirty-six hours of the time when the actual work is done. He doesn't realize that that means hours of expert book-keeping, and that we haven't a book-keeper in the camp. So Burford and I have had to tackle it, in addition to our regular work. And it's no trifle." Roderick rolled up a formidable mass of notes. There was a worried tone in his steady voice.
"Why doesn't the company send you a book-keeper?"
"Burford and I are planning to ask for one when the president and Breckenridge come to camp on their tour of inspection."
"Could I do some of the work for you, Rod?"
"Thank you, Sis, but I'm afraid you'd find it a Chinese puzzle. I get tangled up in it myself half the time. We must set down every solitary item of cost, no matter how trifling; not only wages and supplies, but breakdowns, time losses, even those of a few minutes; then calculate our average, day by day; then plot a curve for each week's work, showing the cost of the contract for that week, and set it against our yardage record for that week. Then verify it, item by item, and send it in."
"All tied up in beautiful red-tape bow-knots, I suppose," added Marian, with a sniff. She poked gingerly into the mass of papers. "The idea of adding book-keeping to your twelve-hour shift as superintendent! And in this stuffy, noisy little box!" She looked impatiently around the close narrow state-room. The ceiling was not two feet above her head; the hot morning sunlight beat on the flat tin roof of the house-boat and dazzled through the windows. "How can you work here?—or sleep, either?"
Rod rubbed his hand uncertainly across his eyes.
"I don't sleep much, for a fact. Too hot.Sometimes I drop off early, but the men always wake me at midnight when the last shift goes off duty."
"But the laborers are all across on their own quarter-boat. They don't come aboard your house-boat?"
"No, but the quarter-boat is only fifty feet away. The cook has their hot supper ready at twelve, and they lark over it, and laugh and shout and cut up high-jinks, like a pack of school-boys. I wouldn't mind, only I can't get to sleep again. I lie there and mull over the contract, you see. I can't help it."
"Why don't you come up to the Gates farm-house and sleep there?"
"I couldn't think of that. It's too far away. I must stay right here and keep my eye on the work, every minute. You have no idea what a dangerously narrow margin of time we have left; 'specially for those north laterals, you know, Sis." His voice grew sharp and anxious. Marian looked at him keenly. For the first time she saw the dull circles under his eyes, the drawn, tired lines around his steady mouth.
Then she glanced up the ditch. High on its green stilts, Sally Lou's perky little martin-box caught her eye.
"I have it, Rod! Tell some of your laborers to build a cabin for you, like the Burfords'! Then I'll come down and keep house for you."
Roderick shrugged his shoulders.
"I can't spare a solitary laborer from the contract, Marian; not for a day. We're short-handed as it is. No, I'll stay where I am. I'm doing well enough. Steam up, Mulcahy? Good-by, Sis. Back to-morrow!"
Marian watched the launch till it disappeared in the green mist of the willows. Then she sat down to her brother's desk and began to sort the clutter of papers. But sorting them was not an easy matter. To her eyes they were only a bewildering tangle. Marian knew that she possessed an inborn knack at figures, and it piqued her to find that she could not master Roderick's accounts at the first glance. She worked on and on doggedly. The little state-room grew hot and close; the dull throb of the dredge machinery and the noisy voices from without disturbed her more and more.
At last she sprang up and swept the whole mass into her hand-bag. Then she ran up the hill to the martin-box.
Sally Lou, very fresh and cool in pink dimity, sat in her screened nest, with the babies playing on the scrubbed floor. She nodded in amused sympathy at Marian's portentous armful.
"Aren't those records a dismal task! Yes, I've found a way to sift them, though it took me a long time to learn. Start by adding up the time-book accounts; verify each laborer's hours, and see whether his pay checks correspond to his actual working time. Roderick has fifty men on his shift, so that is no small task. Then add up his memoranda of time made by the big dredge; and also the daily record of the two little dredges up at the laterals. Then run over the steward's accounts and see whether they check with his bills——"
Marian stared at Sally Lou, astonished.
"Well, but Sally Lou! Think how much time that will mean! Why, I would have to spend all afternoon on the time-books alone."
Sally Lou raised her yellow head and looked atMarian very steadily. A tiny spark glinted in her brown eyes.
"Well, what if it does take all afternoon? Have you anything better to do?"
There was a minute of silence. Then Marian's cheeks turned rather pink.
"I suppose not. But it is horridly tedious work, Sally Lou. On such a warm day, too."
"It certainly is." Sally Lou's voice was quite dry. She caught up Thomas Tucker, who was trying laboriously to feed Mr. Finnegan with a large ball of darning cotton. "You'd find it even more tedious if you were obliged to work at it evenings, as your brother does. Can't you stay to lunch, Marian? We'll love to have you; won't we, babies?"
"Thank you, no. Mrs. Gates will expect me at home."
Marian walked back through the woods, her head held high. The glint in Sally Lou's eyes had been a bit of a challenge. Again she felt her cheeks flush hot, with a queer puzzled vexation.
"I'll show her that I can straighten Rod's papers, no matter how muddled they are!" shesaid to herself, tartly. And all that warm spring afternoon she toiled with might and main.
Roderick, meanwhile, was spending a hard, discouraging day. Arriving at Saint Louis, he found the secretary of the coal-mining company at his office. Eager and insistent, he poured out his urgent need of the promised barge-load of coal. The consignment was now a week overdue. The dredges had only a few hundred bushels at hand; in less than forty-eight hours the engines must shut down, unless he could get the fuel to camp.
"You can't be any more disturbed by this crisis than I am, Mr. Hallowell," the secretary assured him. "Owing to a strike at the mines we have been forced to cancel all deliveries. I can't let you have a single ton."
Roderick gasped.
"But our dredges! We don't dare shut down. Our contract has a chilled-steel time-lock, sir, with a heavy forfeit. We must not run over our date limits. We've got to have that coal!"
"You may be able to pick up a few tons from small dealers," said the secretary, turning back tohis desk. "You'll be buying black diamonds in good earnest, for the retail price has gone up thirty per cent since the news came of the mines strike. Wish you good luck, Mr. Hallowell. Sorry that is all that I can do for you."
Roderick lost no time. He bought a business directory and hailed a taxicab. For six hours he drove from one coal-dealer's office to another. At eight o'clock that night he reached his hotel, tired in every bone, but in royal high spirits. Driblet by driblet, and paying a price that fairly staggered him, he had managed to buy over four hundred tons.
"That will keep us going till the strike is settled," he told Burford over the long-distance.
"Bully for you!" returned Burford, jubilant. "But how will you bring it up to camp?"
"Oh, the railroad people have promised empties on to-morrow morning's early freight to Grafton. Then we can carry it to camp on our own barges. I shall come up on that freight myself. I shall not risk losing sight of that coal. Mind that."
At five the next morning Roderick went down to the freight yards. His coal wagons were alreadyarriving. But not one of the promised "empties" could he find.
"There is a mistake somewhere," said the yard-master. "Can't promise you a solitary car for three days, anyway. Traffic is all behindhand. You'd better make a try at head-quarters."
"I have no time to waste at head-quarters," retorted Rod. He was white with anger and chagrin. This ill luck was a bolt from a clear sky. "I'll go down to the river front and hire a barge and a tow-boat. I'll get that coal up to camp to-morrow if I have to carry it in my suit-case."
His hunt for a barge proved a stern chase, but finally he secured a large flat-boat at a reasonable rental. But after searching the river front for miles, he found only one tow-boat that could be chartered. The tow's captain, noting Roderick's anxiety, and learning that he represented the great Breckenridge Company, promptly declared that he would not think of doing the two-days' towing for less than five hundred dollars.
"Five hundred dollars for two days' towing! And I have already paid three times the mine price for my coal!" Roderick groaned inwardly.
Suddenly his eye caught two trim red stacks and a broad familiar bow not fifty yards away. It was the little packet, theLucy Lee. She was just lowering her gang-plank, making ready to take on freight for her trip up-stream.
"I'll hail theLucy. Maybe the captain can tell me where to find another tow-boat. Ahoy, theLucy! Is your captain aboard? Ask him to come on deck and talk to Hallowell, of the Breckenridge Company, will you?"
"The captain has not come down yet, sir. But our pilot, Commodore McCloskey, is here. Will you talk with him?"
"Will I talk to the commodore? I should hope so!" Rod's strained face broke into a joyful grin. He could have shouted with satisfaction when Commodore McCloskey, trim as a gimlet in starchy white duck, strolled down the gang-plank and gave him a friendly hand.
"Sure, I don't wonder ye're red-hot mad," he said, with twinkling sympathy. "Five hundred dollars for two days' tow! 'Tis no better than a pirate that tow-boat captain is, sure. But come with me. I have a friend at court that can giveye a hand, maybe. Hi, boy! Is Captain Lathrop, of theQueen, round about?"
"TheQueen? Why, her captain is the very man who demanded the five hundred dollars!" blurted Rod.
At that moment the captain's head popped from the cabin door. He stared at Roderick. He stared at Commodore McCloskey. Then he had the grace to duck wildly back, with a face sheepish beyond words to describe.
"Well, Captain Lathrop!" Commodore McCloskey's voice rang merciless and clear. "Tell me the truth. Is it yourself that's turned highway robber? Five hundred dollars for twenty hours' tow! Sure, ye must be one of thim high fin-an-ciers we read about in the papers. Why not make it five hundred dollars per ton? Then ye could sell theQueenand buy yourself a Cunarder for a tow-boat instead."
Captain Lathrop squirmed.
"How should I know he was a friend of yours, commodore? I'll take his coal all the way to camp, and gladly, for three hundred, seein' as it's a favor to you."
"For three hundred, is it?" The commodore began a further flow of eloquence. But Rod caught his arm.
"Three hundred will be all right. And I'm more obliged to you, commodore, than I can say. Now I'm off. If ever I can do you a good turn, mind you give me the chance!"
It was late the next night when Roderick reached the camp landing with his precious black diamonds. He was desperately tired, muddy, and begrimed with smoke and coal-dust, hungry as a wolf, and hilarious with relief at his hard-earned success. Marian, Sally Lou, and Burford were all waiting for him at the little pier. Sally Lou dragged him up to the martin-box for a late supper. Afterward Marian, who was to spend the night with Sally Lou, walked back with him to his house-boat.