“When did Hardin go out?” He knew the date himself. He expected the answer would trail wisps of other information. He had a very active curiosity about Hardin. The man’s failures had been spectacular.
The young fellow was thinking aloud. “The dam went November twenty-ninth. Hardin was given a decent interval to resign. Of course, he was fired. It was an outrage—” He remembered that he was speaking to a stranger, and broke off suddenly. Rickard did not question him. He made another note. Why was it an outrage, or why did it appear so? In perspective, from the Mexican barranca, where he had been at the time, the failure of that dam had been another bar sinister against Hardin.
“I see that you are from the University of California?” he said, following his courier to the door that opened on a long covered inner porch. Another lawn of alfalfa rested the eyes weary of dust and sand. A few willows and castor-beans of mushroom habit shut out the desert, denied the lean naked presence just beyond the leafy screen. Rickard nodded at the pin of gold and blue enamel.
“Out for a year,” glowed the lad. “Dad wanted me to get some real stuff in my head. He said the Colorado would give me more lessons—more real knowledge in a year than I’d get in six at college. I kicked up an awful row—”
The older man smiled. “Of course. You didn’t want to leave your class.”
“You’re a college man, then.” Rickard uncovered his “frat” pin under his vest lapel. “Father wasn’t. He couldn’t understand. It was tough.”
“You don’t want to go back now?”
The boy made a wry face. “He expects me to go back in August. Says I must. Think I’d leave the desert if the Colorado goes on another rampage? Miss the chance of a lifetime? I’ll make him see it. If I don’t, I’ll buck, that’s all.”
“You did not tell me your name,” was suggested.
“MacLean, George MacLean,” said the young man rather consciously. It was a good deal to live up to. He always felt the appraisement which followed that admission. George MacLean, elder, was known among the railroad circles to be a man of iron, one of the strongest of the heads of the Overland Pacific system. He was not the sort of man a son could speak lightly of disobeying.