Rickard spoke again. “Mr. Estrada! We won’t detain you any longer, Mr. Ogilvie.”
Reluctantly, the accountant relinquished the papers. His retreating coat tails looked ludicrously whipped, but no one laughed. Hardin’s scowl deepened.
“Showing his power,” he thought. “He’s going to call for a new pack.”
Estrada pushed the minutes through with but a few unimportant interruptions. He was sitting at the same desk with Rickard. Hardin, sensitive and sullen, thought he saw the meeting managed between them. “It’s all slated,” ran his angry blood. “The meeting’s a farce. It was all fixed in Los Angeles, or in Marshall’s office.” He whipped himself into rebellion. He was no baby. He knew about these matters better than these strangers, this fancy dude! He’d show them!
It took their silent cooperation to hold him down. It became more apparent to him that they were all pitted against him. He was being pressed against the wall.
Several times he attempted to bring the tangled affairs of the water companies before the directors. Rickard would not discuss the water companies.
“Because he’s not posted! He’s beginning to see what he’s up against,” ran Hardin’s stormy thoughts. He felt Rickard’s hand in this, although it was Estrada, apparently, who shelved the mystifications of the uneasy companies, their rights, their dissatisfactions and their lawsuits. Babcock seconded the Mexican’s motion to discuss those issues at the next meeting. “It is a put-up job,” sulked Tom Hardin.
He was on his feet the next minute with a motion to complete the Hardin head-gate. Violently he declaimed to Babcock and MacLean his wrongs, the injustice that had been done him. Marshall had let that fellow Maitland convince him that the gate was not practicable; had it not been for him, the gate would be in place now; all this time and money saved. And the Maitland dam, built instead! Where was it? Where was the money, the time, put in that little toy? Sickening! His face purpled over the memory. Why was he allowed to begin again with the gate? “Answer me that. Why was I allowed to begin again? It’s all child’s play, that’s what it is. And when I am in it again, up to my neck, he pulls me off.”
This was the real Hardin, the uncouth, overaged Lawrence student! The new manner was just a veneer. Rickard had been expecting it to wear thin.
“Why did we begin it, I ask you?” repeated Hardin, his face flushed and eager. “To make laughing-stocks of ourselves down here? That’s a costly game for the O. P. to play. What does Marshall know about conditions, sitting in his office, and looking at maps, and reading letters and reports from his spies? I’ll give you the answer: he wants the glory himself. Why did he tell me that he thought my gate would go, and then start another ten times as costly? He wants all the credit. He’d like to see my gate a failure. Why does he push the concrete gate ahead, and hold up mine every few days?”