Again he was pacing restlessly back and forth in the little board shack that was Rawson's field head-quarters. Rawson, seated by the window, was looking at tables of comparative melting points. He glanced up sharply.
"You haven't found it yet?" he questioned. "A forty-foot bailer! Now that's a nice easy little thing to mislay."
Riley had followed the excited Smithy into the room; he stood silently by the door until he caught Rawson's questioning glance.
"Forty feet or forty inches," he said, "'tis gone! 'Twas there by the derrick last night, and this marnin'—"
"That's fine," Rawson interrupted with heavy sarcasm. "I haven't enough down below ground to keep my mind occupied—I need a few mysteries up top. Now do you really expect me to believe that a thing like that bailer has been carried off?"
This time it was Smithy who interrupted. "You can just practise believing on that, Dean," he said. "When you get so you can believe a forty-foot bailer can vanish into thin air, then you'll be ready for what I've got. This is what I came in to tell you: that one truckload of steel grillage beams for the turbine footings—they were put out where we surveyed for the first power house—dumped on the sand...."
"Well?" questioned Rawson, as Smithy paused. His look was daring Smithy to say what he knew was coming.
"Five tons of steel beams," said Smithy softly, "gone—just like that! Just a hollow in the sand!"
