She flung another of her inscrutable smiles at him, and went up the bank, the paper unread in her hands. Godfrey’s uncertain glance followed her. He had vexed her, some way. He should follow her, see her to her tent. She expected those little attentions. He loved to please her, but his eyes went back, yearning, to the river. Those men working like tigers—! He was down the bank in a trice.
“Give me something to do!”
The long afternoon wore away. On a giant rock on a flat car, Silent stretched his muscles, and looked at his watch. Mortally tired he was. He thought of his bed, and a cup of steaming coffee. An hour more! They were now dynamiting the largest rocks on the cars before unloading them. The heavy loads could not be emptied quickly enough. Not dribbled, the rock, but dumped simultaneously, else the gravel and rock might be washed down-stream faster than they could be put on. The job called for an alert eye and hand working together. Many cars must be unloaded at once; the din on Silent’s train was terrific. His crew looked like devils, drenched from the spray which rose from the river each time the rock-pour began; blackened by the smoke from the belching engine. The river was ugly in its wrath. It was humping itself for its final stand against the absurdity of human intention; its yellow tail swished through the bents of the trestle.
“It isn’t what I’d call pretty,” yelled Wooster to Bodefeldt, as they passed in a flat car. The noise of the rock-pouring began again.
“Not a picnic,” cried Bodefeldt.
But there was a thrill in it. They were working against the most formidable force in nature, against time, and moreover without precedent. Not one of them would risk a hazard as to the next move of the wily Dragon. A swift rise, and swift rises of the Gila were always to be feared, and their barrier would be flung down the channel as a useless toy. Haste was their only chance. The breath of the workers came quick and short. The order came for more speed. Rickard moved from bank to raft; knee deep in water, screaming orders through the din; directing the gangs; speeding the rock trains; helping Wooster, who was driving large gangs of Mexicans and Indians. The river must not be allowed to creep around the bulwark, to catch them unawares; the work must not halt for an instant; the force of the thwarted river growing fiercer with each pour of rock. Haste against strength, or the victory the river’s! Hardin oscillated between the levee and dams, taking orders, giving orders. His energy was superb. His heavy run was like a bulldog’s, full of ferocious purpose. Marshall halted him as he thumped past, straight from the levees.
“It’s going all right,” he assured the man who had humiliated him. His sense of wrong was sleeping; the battle developed the real soldier. “The levee will stand if we can work quick enough.”
“Good!” cried Marshall. “We’ll win yet, old man!”
It had grown dark, but no one yet had thought of the lights, the great Wells’ burners stretched across the channel. To Marshall’s war-trained ear, the glut of raining rock sounded like cannonading. It was a queer scene, the dark pocket of battle-ground, the clouds of smoke, the dashing mountains of spray; men rushing to and fro like masked dwarfs, trains thundering on to the trestles. Suddenly, the lights flared out.
Marshall found himself standing by Captain Brandon, who had his note-book in his hand. The dark had stolen on him; but he kept on scribbling his report to the Sun. He did not hear Marshall’s inquiry.