“Stop the mattress weaving and dump like hell!” had been his orders.
No one believed that the soft silt bottom of the river which cut out like salt would hold a pour of rock. Marshall, aided by Rickard, schemed to fight power with haste. Faster than the current could wash it down-stream, the crews would rain gravel and rock on to the treacherous river-bed.
“And there’s always the concrete gate when everything else fails,” Marshall was fond of repeating when he saw polite incredulity in opposing faces.
“Boycott the Indians, well, I’m blowed,” the beady eyes sparked at Hardin. “Now, he’s cut his own throat.”
“By the eternal!” swore Hardin. MacLean left the two engineers matching oaths. “If he wins out on this!” he was speculating as he made his way back to his copying, “I’ll back him against anything. Wonder how he feels, inside, about it? I know just how I’d feel. Scared stiff.”
There was an ominous quiet the next day. Not an Indian offered to work at the river. A few stolid bucks came to their tasks on Tuesday morning; they were told by Rickard himself that there was no work for them. Rickard appeared ignorant of the antagonism of the engineers.
Wooster watched the Yumas carry their stormy faces back to their camp.
“Garl darn it,” he cried. “There’s his chance, and he lost it.”
An unfathered rumor started that Rickard was in with the Reclamation Service men; that he wanted the work to fail; to be adopted by the Service. MacLean broke a lance or two against the absurd slander. He was making the discovery that a man’s friendship for a man may be deeper than a man’s love for a woman. It was upsetting all his preconceived notions. He was backing his hot young will for Rickard to win out. He got to blow-point that evening with Bodefeldt. He avoided Wooster and Silent and Hardin. It inflamed his boyish loyalty to find that he was losing his old friendships. He was a Rickard man. He was made to feel the reproach of it.
Wednesday dawned dully. Not an Indian reported. Squatting in their camp, they listened to “Fig Tree Jim” and Joe Apache, the insurgent bucks. Coronel passed from camp to camp, his advice unpopular. “They would get their pay, and stay out Monday beside. Joe Apache said so.”