CHAPTER XII
AT THE CABLE TOWER
Jerry did not come home that night and consequently Bob was not forced to decide whether or not his room-mate was to be trusted. The next morning Mr. Whitney mentioned that he had sent Mr. Rutherford and his corps up the river to check up some topographical figures. They were to be gone several days.
This would delay for a time the necessity of taking action in regard to Jerry, and Bob was grateful for the leeway it gave him. Anything and everything might happen in the spare time he was given. Perhaps all the trouble would blow over. He certainly hoped so.
Ted Hoyt evidently had wasted no time in carrying out Bob’s plan, for he did not show up at breakfast. His chances of success worried Bob all morning and once or twice Mr. Whitney had to call him down for some inattention to the business at hand. But when the day passed and Ted had not returned, Bob was reasonably certain that the cattleman had not refused to take in his son. That was a help.
Since becoming an aide to the Chief, Bob had not entirely given up his unofficial inspection trips. The dam and all the operations that were the building of it still fascinated him and his spare time was given to roaming over the job. So good an observer was he, that time after time he surprised Mr. Whitney with his knowledge of some obscure detail of the work.
“How the dickens do you happen to know that?” he would exclaim.
“Happened to be over there the other night and used my eyes,” was the usual reply of the boy.
There was a full moon the night following the day Ted had gone home and Bob had taken advantage of it to go up to the west cableway tower, from the foot of which he could see the whole work lying bathed in the intense silver light. He wanted to think and he was always able to do that better out of doors.
He did not feel he was doing his share towards clearing up the trouble which threatened to break. Cudgel his brains as he would, there seemed nothing for him to do. It had been his idea to send Ted off, but since then he might just as well have been in Alaska for all the good he’d been. For a long time he lay there, without finding a way out of his difficulty.